To survive, newspapers must show their communities that they are an essential civic asset, not like 'news from Google' - Entrepreneur Generations

By Al Cross, Professor and Director
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Does reaction to the death of one small newspaper on the Lake of the Woods indicate that we are entering "the golden age of ignorance," as Minnesota Public Radio blogger Bob Collins declares? Maybe, if newspapers can't convince their communities that they are an essential civic asset.

Richard Fausset of The New York Times looks over a proof of the
final edition with Publisher Rebecca Colden. (Photo: John Engler, MPR)

Collins followed up on MPR reporter John Engler's report on this week's demise of the Warroad Pioneer, one of three weeklies in Roseau County, on Minnesota's border with Manitoba. Engler paraphrased New York Times reporter Richard Fausset: "He said he spent a week in Warroad, talking to locals about the paper closing. He admitted that most folks, outside of the Pioneer staff and their husbands, didn't seem too broken up about it." Then Engler added: "Out on the streets of Warroad, a handful of locals backed up his assessment," and cited one as saying that "he gets his news from Google, 'just like everybody else'."

That comment reflects "monumental ignorance," said Reed Anfinson, former president of the National Newspaper Association and publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, in central Minnesota. "There is no local civic reporting from Google. Google captures our work and pirates it – if it is available." Anfinson also said, "A New York Times reporter finding some disgruntled, or disinterested, people and using them to imply definitive assessment of the community’s feelings about the newspaper, I find troubling."

Fausset was assigned to "tell the story of the prototypical American small town losing its voice," Engler reported. He probably made a good choice; the paper is like many rural weeklies that have closed in the last 15 years: in a sparsely populated area outside a county seat, with a shrinking advertising base and independent ownership that couldn't find a suitable successor or buyer.

Roseau County, Minnesota (Google map)

Publisher Rebecca Colden told me she couldn't work out a deal with the paper's former owners, who have five nearby weeklies based in nearby Baudette. That was after she'd considered going to free distribution, which she concluded was too risky, and tried to compete more directly with the county-seat paper, the Roseau Times-Region, 22 miles away. As often happens, local loyalties trumped other factors, Colden said: "Because of that community loyalty over there, we were never able to capture that advertising base."

She said her local ad base has shriveled because Marvin Windows and Doors, the main local employer, has "a new generation of workers" who were more willing than their predecessors to shop in other towns. "It doesn't bug them to drive two hours to go to Walmart," she said, so more than a dozen of Warroad's approximately 50 storefronts are empty. "We're really a community in transition."

The Pioneer's death "is more than a one-off loss of a newspaper," Anfinson wrote. "I am hearing from newspaper publishers and executive directors of state newspaper associations that their concerns about the future of small-town weekly newspapers is growing." Almost a year ago, he was featured in a Rural Blog item headlined, "Times get tougher for rural newspapers." Now it seems even tougher. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and prove to their communities that they are needed.

from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2VcxKLk To survive, newspapers must show their communities that they are an essential civic asset, not like 'news from Google' - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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