Long Live Local Journalism

Across the Fence #582

Before Door County author and journalist Norbert Blei died in 2013, he did a story on the importance of including local columns/writers in the local papers.

Times are changing as we all know. The day of locally-owned businesses, whether banks, grocery stores, hardware stores, clothing stores, or newspapers, is fading into the sunset. They’re being replaced by larger and larger conglomerates, that buy up and force out small, locally-owned businesses. It’s a fact of life. Stop for a moment and think of businesses in your community that have been lost because of this. 

The newspaper business has also changed. Most local papers were owned and published by a person or family that lived in the community. Today, very few weeklies are locally-owned. They’ve been bought out and are under the management of larger corporations that own and publish many newspapers.

Some of the larger papers have fallen on hard times. But I’m happy to report that local, weekly newspapers are alive and well, and are holding their own. 

Some have even increased their circulation base. I think this reflects the importance of the hometown newspaper. They’re the only paper that gives full coverage of the events and stories that are important to you. They cover local activities and photos accompany the in-depth stories. 

Many of those stories are clipped and What if your local high school’s sports team was in an important game and the only mention in the paper was the final score in the box scores listing? There were no details and no photos showing the action.

What if you held a big community event and the only mention in the paper was one, small paragraph of coverage? No photos of local people or activities accompanied the short paragraph.

 I recently came across some stories that my mother had clipped and saved from my 4-H days. It was great to see those photos that included friends, and to read the stories. I was glad our local Westby Times had covered those events from my younger years.

Having been in the advertising, marketing, and journalism business most of my working life, I have an understanding of the problems newspapers are facing today. We’re told that people have a much shorter attention span than they used to have. They want their information now, fast, and short. Think of a television newscast where each story receives a brief mention. There’s very little in-depth reporting. We’ve become conditioned to accepting short, sound bites.

But lets return to your local newspaper, the one you’re reading this column in. Chances are, you take your time and read many of the stories in their entirety, not just the intro paragraph. Why? Because this is your community. This is your paper. These stories are about your friends and neighbors. These are your people. The photos are of people you know. Even family members can be found on these pages. These are stories and subjects that mean something personal to you. This is where you check for upcoming events in your community, where you find an ad for a local pancake supper put on by a community organization or church; maybe even a lutefisk dinner is advertised; a benefit event for a local person may be listed; specials at local businesses, along with want ads and garage sales can be found, and the list goes on and on.

The local newspaper is very important to the community. It’s your voice. It’s your link to what’s happening in the community. I was witness to the importance of the local paper one day when I was traveling through Boscobel. I decided to stop at the Boscobel Dial office and say hello to Editor David Krier and the staff. The paper had just been delivered from the printer and was available for sale. There was a steady stream of people coming and going to get their paper hot off the press. Don’t tell me that a local paper isn’t important to a community.

Norbert Blei, a writer who lived in Door County, Wisconsin, was a champion of local papers and local journalism. He said that a community needs a newspaper that provides full news coverage, interesting features, concerned columnists, good writing, good stories, and an editor/publisher who knows the place, the people, the problems, and how to put it all down in words (and good photography). He said the past is the future when it comes to local journalism–which corporate owners of newspapers often fail to grasp. To maintain a viable, interesting, local paper, we need all those things, instead of shrinking the pages, the staff, the news, and starving the readership, by focusing solely on “bottom line” instead of the written line. Columnists need to be compensated for their stories. They can’t be expected to provide weekly stories for free. Unfortunately, many newspapers expect to run columns for nothing or they’re not interested. That’s like a slap in the face. They’re telling you your writing isn’t worth anything. Many people tell me my column is the first thing they read or one of the main reasons they subscribe. That should be worth something. Norbert Blei loved my column, which meant a lot to me because he didn’t give praise lightly.

We need to support our local paper with our subscriptions and advertising so they can survive. If a community loses its newspaper, it loses its identity and voice. No community should let that happen. Once its gone, it won’t be coming back. 

*