The Mineral Wells Index, in Palo Pinto County, Texas, closed as of the first of the year. It had cut to semiweekly either at the start of, or maybe before the start of, the pandemic. I remember it 20 years ago as a five-day daily.
Even then, CNHI was cheap. No separate publisher for it; it shared one with six-day daily Weatherford, the Democrat, 20 miles east.
Even then, CNHI was also dumb, lazy or both. At the tail end of the old century, as the Fort Worth StartleGram pulled in its horns from circulating west of Abilene (and the Dallas Morning Snooze filled a gap by going all the way out to New Mexico), I thought CNHI had a more localized opportunity to fill in a gap.
Do a Sunday paper for Weatherford-Mineral Wells combined, and treat the Weatherford Saturday paper as a "bulldog" for it. Ditto on the weekend Mineral Wells paper.
With Weatherford College in Weatherford, you could run local sports news in that Sunday edition, for example. And, if CNHI had thought to do its Texas regional reporters, or even borrowing a page from USA Today and Gannett way back then, a weekly "roundup" of stuff.
But, it didn't.
And, CNHI won't sell papers at market cost today.
Instead, even as the Retirement System of Alabama claims it wants to sell CNHI, and CNHI claims it wants to sell individual papers, it "can't," not at market value. Nor can the RSA cell CNHI at market value.
This would cave the entire value of its pension system, assuming that its value, in terms of the percentage that's invested in CNHI, is based on some stated value written by the RSA 20 years ago. In short, if not actual pension fraud, there's something like the spirit of it going on.
As for Mineral Wells? The old Palo Pinto paper in the county seat closed some time ago, so a county of 25,000 is officially a news desert. Given the degree that CNHI has staff whacks and its quarterly furloughs, no way Weatherford is filling all the vacancy out of its coverage.
No idea if Jim Moser has toyed with expanding Jacksboro's coverage into Mineral Wells or not. All he has to do is print weekly, and grab the Mineral Wells, Mineral Wells ISD, and Palo Pinto County legals away from the Democrat.
Theoretically, you'd get the Mineral Wells Chamber to help on a subscription drive and get, say, 500 people to precommit.
Weekly paper, 10-12 pages, or if you get the ads, eventually, semiweekly at 8 pages per? You can make a profit on that. Run a joint biz card directory with your other papers in that area, Moser.
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