Dec 5, 2023·edited Dec 5, 2023Liked by Kathleen McLaughlin
I like to photograph small town newspapers whenever I encounter them—especially in Montana and western North Dakota. I wish I could post photos here! I have dozens of them. And many of the little weeklies are still thriving and remain an important source of local news. I'm also deeply grateful to the do-it-all reporters who interviewed me about my book at 1) the Crosby Journal in North Dakota, and 2) The Nugget in Sisters, Ore. I probably sold 200 books thanks to those insightful interviews with local papers!
I live just south of Hardwick, VT, where the local newspaper building has become a community org, The Civic Standard, which is doing necessary and awesome and also fun things in their rural town. Community dinners, a haiku club, helping neighbors after the flooding last summer, a HUGE yankee swap, just a ton of great, heartwarming activity. https://www.facebook.com/thecivicstandard/
Here in Spokane, the Spokesman-Review is still in its original home in the Cowles Building (though presumably occupies less of it now). The print operation was across the street, but has moved out to the valley where real estate is much cheaper. The former print building now houses a local distillery and its tasting room/restaurant, which I think is really cool.
The Livingston Enterprise has just relocated to what used to be the pawn shop at the end of my alley. They were sold a year ago, the print facility seems to be dormant, and the old building (a very boring 70s building) is for sale. The paper has gone from 5 days afternoon delivery to 2 day delivery, with a lot of blather about their "expanded web content". Local reporting seems to be mostly press releases run verbatim (a few exceptions. Karin Ronnow is doing some really good reporting.) I just subscribed to the Bozeman Chronicle for the winter (wood stove! I need newsprint!) and had to call some call center in India to sign up. It comes by mail, but we'll see. I'm of the age where not getting a daily paper is weird and unsettling -- but no one will deliver one to me ...
In 1970, CH Hoiles, ageing publisher of 57 libertarian newspapers & 6 TV stations, allied with me as a 17-year old editor of an 8-page youth newspaper The New Horizon. I had challenged him to do niche marketing across his chain to create 517 newsprint magazines to support local to national newswrappers they would go in. I asked him to think about how many boat articles there are in the general smush sports pages among 3 major sports from high school to pro, when there are 17 boat magazines in any boat sales place. Further, we would ask existing subscribers and their family members exactly what types of newsprint magazines and frequency they would want as hardcopy keepers for ten-cents each. Higher interest would reduce the bulk being ignored as bird cage liners, and kept with a passion shared with other like-minded folks. Then we would collate them in a custom assembled bag, delivered to their doorstep.
Hardcopy still has a place.
Through 2 management and generational changes (the former one was trying to devalue the chain by refusing to do the newsprint magazine plan, and lost to generational owners, but it still was not implemented).
I advocated CH Hoiles and my plan for editorial and classified computerization, satellite or telex networked copy. He knew local news would die without other niche markets supporting it, with all the local possibilities for demonstrating freedom in common area management & maintenance (CAMM) using Volitional Science & Business he wrote editorials about. CH sent his reporters through Voli Sci courses by Jay Snelson; versus fascist business-government partnerships and socialist politicization of Social Science and Public /Police /Surveillance Administration.
Simple marketing was going to have a chance until in borrowing 40% of $1B from Blackstone & Providence Equity to sell the papers to the 3rd/4th generations, the Chinese Communists who supplied about 25 years ago 20% of Blackstone’s capital, ordered the CEO without board seats but quietly to pull their loans. Freedom Newspapers Inc. was surprised even as the most pragmatic of anti-communist anti-stateist papers in America. I did investigative reporting on why this was being pushed and went to the board, but they deemed it too late. Freedom Newspapers was sold off to cross town rivals for basically the price of paper rolls.
I continued to push for it to major buyers who didn’t quite know what to do, even as smorgasbord subscriber selected magazine services rise, even as I developed 2-way PhoneVoter TV Network in 1992, see PhoneVoter.us and todays FreedomTVnetworks.com/producers and interactive iTV networks ramping up in 2024: WomenLeading.infoRViTV.com and DebateTourney.com
and ad agencies largely owned or managed by women get it. If you do, as I think so, say hello. There is still a place for hardcopy.
My hometown paper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has had a journey as well.
WRT your town: have you ever been in the courthouse? If not, go there now, it's an amazing structure. I had a case there several years ago, and the judge bragged that the courthouse had cost more to build than the state capitol building. Beautiful interior stone imported from Italy, hauled by wagon up the hill from the rail depot. There was still a wooden toilet in the building a decade ago -- I don't know about now. That's what he told me, anyway. It's an emphasis on the physical that we just don't see any more. Buildings like the Gallatin County justice center is about all we're up for these days.
I like to photograph small town newspapers whenever I encounter them—especially in Montana and western North Dakota. I wish I could post photos here! I have dozens of them. And many of the little weeklies are still thriving and remain an important source of local news. I'm also deeply grateful to the do-it-all reporters who interviewed me about my book at 1) the Crosby Journal in North Dakota, and 2) The Nugget in Sisters, Ore. I probably sold 200 books thanks to those insightful interviews with local papers!
I live just south of Hardwick, VT, where the local newspaper building has become a community org, The Civic Standard, which is doing necessary and awesome and also fun things in their rural town. Community dinners, a haiku club, helping neighbors after the flooding last summer, a HUGE yankee swap, just a ton of great, heartwarming activity. https://www.facebook.com/thecivicstandard/
Here in Spokane, the Spokesman-Review is still in its original home in the Cowles Building (though presumably occupies less of it now). The print operation was across the street, but has moved out to the valley where real estate is much cheaper. The former print building now houses a local distillery and its tasting room/restaurant, which I think is really cool.
The Livingston Enterprise has just relocated to what used to be the pawn shop at the end of my alley. They were sold a year ago, the print facility seems to be dormant, and the old building (a very boring 70s building) is for sale. The paper has gone from 5 days afternoon delivery to 2 day delivery, with a lot of blather about their "expanded web content". Local reporting seems to be mostly press releases run verbatim (a few exceptions. Karin Ronnow is doing some really good reporting.) I just subscribed to the Bozeman Chronicle for the winter (wood stove! I need newsprint!) and had to call some call center in India to sign up. It comes by mail, but we'll see. I'm of the age where not getting a daily paper is weird and unsettling -- but no one will deliver one to me ...
In 1970, CH Hoiles, ageing publisher of 57 libertarian newspapers & 6 TV stations, allied with me as a 17-year old editor of an 8-page youth newspaper The New Horizon. I had challenged him to do niche marketing across his chain to create 517 newsprint magazines to support local to national newswrappers they would go in. I asked him to think about how many boat articles there are in the general smush sports pages among 3 major sports from high school to pro, when there are 17 boat magazines in any boat sales place. Further, we would ask existing subscribers and their family members exactly what types of newsprint magazines and frequency they would want as hardcopy keepers for ten-cents each. Higher interest would reduce the bulk being ignored as bird cage liners, and kept with a passion shared with other like-minded folks. Then we would collate them in a custom assembled bag, delivered to their doorstep.
Hardcopy still has a place.
Through 2 management and generational changes (the former one was trying to devalue the chain by refusing to do the newsprint magazine plan, and lost to generational owners, but it still was not implemented).
I advocated CH Hoiles and my plan for editorial and classified computerization, satellite or telex networked copy. He knew local news would die without other niche markets supporting it, with all the local possibilities for demonstrating freedom in common area management & maintenance (CAMM) using Volitional Science & Business he wrote editorials about. CH sent his reporters through Voli Sci courses by Jay Snelson; versus fascist business-government partnerships and socialist politicization of Social Science and Public /Police /Surveillance Administration.
Simple marketing was going to have a chance until in borrowing 40% of $1B from Blackstone & Providence Equity to sell the papers to the 3rd/4th generations, the Chinese Communists who supplied about 25 years ago 20% of Blackstone’s capital, ordered the CEO without board seats but quietly to pull their loans. Freedom Newspapers Inc. was surprised even as the most pragmatic of anti-communist anti-stateist papers in America. I did investigative reporting on why this was being pushed and went to the board, but they deemed it too late. Freedom Newspapers was sold off to cross town rivals for basically the price of paper rolls.
I continued to push for it to major buyers who didn’t quite know what to do, even as smorgasbord subscriber selected magazine services rise, even as I developed 2-way PhoneVoter TV Network in 1992, see PhoneVoter.us and todays FreedomTVnetworks.com/producers and interactive iTV networks ramping up in 2024: WomenLeading.info RViTV.com and DebateTourney.com
and ad agencies largely owned or managed by women get it. If you do, as I think so, say hello. There is still a place for hardcopy.
My hometown paper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has had a journey as well.
WRT your town: have you ever been in the courthouse? If not, go there now, it's an amazing structure. I had a case there several years ago, and the judge bragged that the courthouse had cost more to build than the state capitol building. Beautiful interior stone imported from Italy, hauled by wagon up the hill from the rail depot. There was still a wooden toilet in the building a decade ago -- I don't know about now. That's what he told me, anyway. It's an emphasis on the physical that we just don't see any more. Buildings like the Gallatin County justice center is about all we're up for these days.