Hmm, I think I'll pass on Verde Valley

 Nice location, Sedona, Arizona, area. Summer-leaning four-season climate.

The job of editor? Pays OK per cost of living there?

The job of editor? Was advertised four months ago. 

That's why I think I'll pass. Whether you hired somebody who spit the bit on you in 90 days, or else are re-advertising for something you never filled? Pass. 

Their online application, which they say they want in addition to a resume, tries to engage in age screening, too. I stopped when I got to that point, as discussed here. 

Publishers' Auxiliary fellates the Roswell (Daily) Record

Not the one in Georgia. 

The one in New Mexico, beloved by conspiracy theorists.

Lead story in Pub Aux's July issue? 

Touts local news production with "Roswell UFO controversy was a local story."

Well, today, there is no controversy.

There IS a lot of grifting by the Beck family ownership.

Re both of those issues? 

Per the "about" on its website, the Record is like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

And, I knew that reality long ago. I also know that, 25 years ago, Roswell boosters were talking about when the city would hit 50,000. Never happened. Population's been basically flat since 1990 and Farmington has just about caught it, while the Farmington metro area is much bigger.

Not that Teri Saylor at PubAux will tell you that. About halfway through:

In 2022, on the 75th anniversary of the crash event, CBS News reported the debate is far from settled, and “for decades, journalists, authors, documentary film crews and others fascinated by the incident have unearthed and publicized countless bits of information and artifacts o that time.”

Ugh. No skeptical organizations or individuals are quoted anywhere. 

But wait, it gets worse:

On the newspaper’s website, Beck wrote that “over decades of conspiracy theories, the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public’s interest and fascination with this story.”

Saylor doesn't question that, nor does she mention the grifting involved. Well, she did mention that above two paragraphs:

Both the Roswell Daily Record and the Morning Dispatch are trademarked, and their UFO crash stories and images cannot be reproduced without permission or by paying royalties to Record Publishing, the parent company.

To be more accurate, she doesn't mention the ethics of a newspaper promoting an untrue conspiracy theory off of which it's grifting.

She and PubAux should be ashamed of themselves. 

But they won't be. 

Your hometown newspaper editor won't miss you, Drew Springer

 I'm not sure when the last time was we got an email about an event or something at my newspaper from Springer's office. On the personal side, I don't think I've gotten a snail-mail mailing in at least two years, unless it was something specifically election related in 2022. (His successor in the state House, David Spiller, is much better.)

So, I noted with interest that a week ago's midweek edition of the Gainesville Register had a story about a Springer retirement event in G'ville. (I don't know if the more-than-a-shopper Cooke County Weekly News will have anything or not.)

Searching Drew's Facebook page would be about No. 10 on the list of local and area Facebook pages to check for news issues, especially knowing his retirement. The Register? Doesn't cover sports, barely covers Cooke County Commissioners Court meetings, doesn't cover the Gainesville Hospital District board meetings, etc. Even without an in-house editor, their staff writer has time to do that. Maybe he's even bookmarked.

Beyond that, I had a school board meeting that Wednesday. More important. You know, the school board at the public school district in Springer's home town.

Well, at least Lee Zion didn't get himself killed

For those in the media who have forgotten the name, Lee Zion was the small-town Minnesota newspaper publisher and owner who, with a variety of cockamamie claims about his journalism and a couple of cockamamie reasons about why he was leaving that I dissected here, with a short follow-up here, decided he "had to" get rid of his newspaper, and as I put it in Mark Twain terms, "see the elephant" by going to fight in Ukraine.

That was just over two years ago. I don't think I had googled his name in a full year, but something prompted me to a few weeks ago.

Well, lo and behold, more than a year ago, and, less than 10 months after doubling down on his determination to head to Ukraine? In early May 2023, he became editor of a weekly paper in Haines, Alaska. No, really.

He discusses his background:

“I’ve done a lot of things. I was the business reporter at the San Diego Business Journal. And in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I was a reporter/copy editor. Then there was Bryson City, North Carolina as an editor, which I greatly enjoyed. And most recently, I was the owner and other things at the Lafayette Nicollet Ledger in Lafayette, Minnesota.

For any "community" type newspaper editor, let alone one at or over age 55, even given the situation, that's a lot of wanderlusting.

He also discusses his time in Ukraine. He said he "put his back out" shortly before he was to head over, and it bothered him the whole time, and he only stayed a few months.

No indication if he offered to have sex for free with any Ukrainian girlchik porn bots, or with any Last Frontier women, either, per his time in Minnesota. Hope you like a LOT more snow and winter overcast than Minnesota had. (Less than 30 percent sunshine for half the year would probably drive me fucking nuts.)

To be totally honest, given the number of things he likely lied about with his Minnesota newspaper — claiming no staff help is a proven lie — he's probably lying about his time in Ukraine and why he didn't stay longer, either.

New Mexico Press Assn errorfest

 Among member newspapers, it lists on its website the Lincoln County News out of Carrizozo.

Problem?

Oh, just a small one.

The link is to the Lincoln County, MAINE newspapers.

In reality, the Carrizozo paper closed years ago and Gannett's Ruidoso paper sucks.

Other eyebrow raisers? Is the Gallup Sun really a member but the Independent is not? If that's actually the case, what's the story behind that.

Then, there's their job bank. Roswell Daily Record was looking for an ME as of end of May. Job not listed.

Of course, when much of the upper Rio Grande is under the thumb of the Albuquerque Journal's parent while Gannett/Craphouse continues to wreck multiple southern-half papers, what can you say?

CJR/Tow has its own Arlie Russell Hochschild

CJR would be Columbia Journalism Review. Tow would be Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

And, its Arlie Russell Hochschild, promoting the newspaper version of a librul listening tour, would be Doron Haussig.

Taussig ignores that, a la Twitter, many of the bitchy conservatives want to "own the libs," if not just troll them. Those with more brains see this as a local-level version of Overton Window shifting.

Another reason I'm a leftist — but a skeptical one! — not a librul, and within this biz, still wanting out while eyeballing certain finish lines at the same time.

The Texas Press Association in 20 years?

It's no secret that "The Great Hollowing Out" is happening, or rather, accelerating, in the High Plains of all Plains states. This includes Texas, and it includes the escarpment areas to the east of the 100th meridian, where, to use biological descriptors, the mixed-grass prairie starts giving way to shortgrass. In Texas, think everything west of Abilene, in every county of less than 10,000 population, and some bigger than that.

But hold on to that thought.

In many cases, it's not totally a hollowing out, especially at the southern end. It's "The Great (Hispanic) Replacement." Or, it's "The Great (Hispanic) Replacement" keeping a "Great Hollowing Out" from being a "Humongous Implosion."

Take Crockett County. After a spike in the 1940s, has been fairly flat (a smaller surge in the 1970s) until the turn of the century. Then, it started declining more.

Counties similar in size that haven't imploded as much is due just to oil. But, just as farms kept getting bigger, especially out on the High Plains, after the most recent oil bust due to overpumping shale, big oil companies vowed to automate more and this time, they're at least halfway holding on to that.

A few counties, like Fort Davis, have bucked the trend. That said, Wiki notes that its average age is over 60 (just one of six counties in the US; two of the others are New Mexico counties with old fart Anglos), meaning the Anglo White folks there are old indeed. In another decade, let alone 20 years, it too will be Hispanic majority, and younger. (For the non-Texans, that's not an oil area.) Or Presidio, where Alpine, especially, has become a retirement area.

But, in the "cis-Pecos" (take that, wingnuts) High Plains of southern Texas, The Great (Hispanic) Replacement" is the thing.

Why did I focus on Crockett County?

A story in the TPA Messenger this summer about the Ozona Stockman fixing to go belly-up before being acquired by Rambler Media.

I don't see that paper as the hub of a seven-county area, though. Of the nine counties it borders, five have papers. Of the four that don't, one is closer to Midland and the other to San Angelo than to Ozona. (And, that county is smaller in size than Crockett, and has been without a paper 15 years or more.) The third, Terrell, home of Sanderson, has less than 1,000 in the county. 

The fourth, Val Verde? Southern Newspapers, referred to here in years past as the "southern front" or similar, owned the Times-News until killing it in late 2020. (Del Rio.)

Nobody's tried to restart it, right?

Not totally. A paper out of Eagle Pass, website and weekly print, purports to cover Del Rio and to deliver the paper there. Yeah, Eagle Pass is 55 miles away, but Ozona is more than 100.

And? The Eagle Pass paper bills itself as bilingual and Val Verde County is more than 90 percent Hispanic (of any race). There's also the web-only (and monolingual, I venture) 830 Times.

And, that Eagle Pass paper, despite including a print product, is NOT a TPA member.

Folks, IMO, that's where West Texas, and especially Southwest Texas, newspapering is headed in the longer-term future. Yeah, it's nice for a Rambler Media, or other nonprofit corporation or whatever, to step in. (That said, sometimes noblesse oblige is more "nice" than nice.) But, Anglo White folks will likely have limited success.

Plus, if you're acquiring papers like that for the legals? Well, most those counties will likely have two, tiny, incorporated towns max. (Terrell has none.) They'll likely have no more than two school districts. And, the county government.

So, outside of budget and tax stuff, very few other legals. Not in oil country in some of these cases, so no legals there. No other environmental or industrial legals. 

And, if the only display advertising you're getting in a monolingual paper is the old White folks stores that will soon close, you're in trouble. The dollar store that's the only "grocery" if your county is less than 5,000 will likely lowball you on insert rates or even stiff you outright, because it has a captive audience.

Finally, no matter the ethnicity of the inhabitants, this area will surely continue to become ever more despoblado due to climate change. Del Rio at nearly 115 and the crappy Texas electric grid doesn't help.

So, as I see it, on the High Plains and in the upper Valley above Laredo and the gateway to the actual valley, the TPA faces a combination of more papers closing, or, if they're being replaced, replaced by bilingual ones that just don't see much value in the TPA. It's going to have to do recruiting and selling.

Flip side? If the Hispanic-oriented press, outside of East Texas' metroplexes, grows a lot more, could we see a Texas Hispanic Press Association, and not as part of TPA, but as its own entity?

Don't blindly romanticize the dying community newspaper

Great piece, to just that critical end, by Pro Publica.

This:

As they vanish, local newspapers are taking on a halo of everything that used to be good about America. They’ve come to symbolize not just halcyon days of neighborly virtues — imagine “It’s a Wonderful Life” if Jimmy Stewart played the editor of the Bedford Falls paper — but the very “bedrock of American democracy.”

Is indeed how the remnant of readership of many newspapers remembers the "golden days" of the print media world.

That remnant, as we all know, is itself older to much older, and Whiter to much Whiter, than the national population.

Daniel Golden, who worked for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Daily News and its post-merger renamed successor for more than 40 years, notes the reality was different, often far different.

Riffing on the situtation described at the top of the story, where the town of Ware was debating in government meeting whether or not to privatize the city's water and sewer system, he goes back to around the time he started in Springfield:

The same focus that inundated readers with information about every committee meeting, crime and high school football game fostered a certain coziness with the area’s power players. Boosterism and conflicts of interest occasionally interfered with telling the full story. It’s possible we would have done a searching examination of a plan to privatize Ware’s water system — unless we risked offending a powerful local figure or business interest.

That's about right.

There were other things as well, things that fortunately I never ran into when a cub or brave at a newspaper under somebody else's editorship and never tried on my own. (Springfield, Massachusetts having an ME insisting that Mount Saint Helens needed to be localized is laughable.)

OR, more seriously, things that today's digital-era reporters bitch about happening then. Not wanting your pay to be dependent on the number of clicks? But a Springfield Daily News reporter back in the 1970s and 1980s was paid by how many different small-town meetings he hit with stories filed.

That said, personally, I'd call Springfield a regional newspaper, more than a community newspaper.

So, Hearne is for sale

Dennis Phillips, after the passing of his wife Theresa, reportedly wants to sell it. Understandable in some ways. Interesting only it; info I had mentioned neither Marlin nor Cameron, which I had heard he was also acquiring or going to acquire, but apparently that never happened.

I'm not interested, personally, and wouldn't trust his books.

You know who COULD buy it? And I told him on Twitter. Dennis' old best buddy, Ty Clevenger. Ty would surely like to slow down his life from national-level wingnuttery, now that the Seth Rich conspiracy theory has been legally thrashed and crashed six ways from Sunday.

Lee Zion says "have my paper" and "I work 100 hours a week"; the not too good to be true backstory

By now, many inside the biz have heard about Lee Zion wanting to gift a small Minnesota weekly paper to "go see the elephant," per an old Civil War phrase, in Ukraine.

First, he's all wet on Ukraine. (As are, within our biz, various freedom of information and free press foundations here in the US who this spring attacked Putin for all of his restrictions on a free press in Russia, but said bupkis about Zelenskyy's similar actions. I refused to run the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas's column by Kelley Shannon when the Texas Press Association forwarded it for Sunshine Week.) And, I've told Zion, in an exchange of emails, that I think he's all wet. I appreciate his love for Ukrainian music and musical instruments, per the Guardian. I like Qawwali music, but, should the Taliban overrun Pakistan, I'm not going fighting on account of that.

On the press side, though, is where I want to look.

First, the part tied to his wanting to become a mercenary. (Let's call a spade a spade.)

What is he going to claim as the stated value of said paper? I mean, he could have a CNHI brain and be valuing the paper at its worth of 20 years ago. Would make a nice tax deduction for him.

Now, I analyze the nutgrafs of what Zion will reveal before handing the keys over to the right person.

What is "profitable"? Can't be THAT profitable if he's running a one-person operation, as it appears. Unless he's greedy, and too capitalistic to care about "sustainable" including his physical and mental health.

And, per another story, no, it's not THAT profitable.

“I’m going into debt to give the newspaper away and into further debt for a plane ticket to Ukraine,” said Zion.

Does he mean debt as far as income, or as far as assets? If he means the former, that's tautological, unless whatever he's going to do in Ukraine is actually lined up and paid. Ditto for having to buy kit to go there. That said, does he mean assets? Is he borrowing money to do this? That would fit with other things I think about m ore.

What is "sustainable"? 100-hour weeks aren't that, in my book.

I address both as an editor of two weeklies that, combined, run a bit over twice his subscribers and probably the same on rack sales.

I work more than 40 hours a week, tis true. Sometimes, well over But, I'll bet that if I took over postal reports, sales and billing (which I don't do), I could still do it in less than 100 hours a week. Might be 80 at RARE times. Not 100. (I write, edit submitted pieces and one regular "stringer," the former editor at the larger paper, shoot, edit submitted photos, paginate, even build my own ads, and deliver papers to post offices, stores and racks on Thursday mornings. I work more than 40, but nowhere near "killing fields.")

And, Zion's not telling the full staffing truth. Besides "stringers," per that "per another story" link? A former employee is writing sports stories and doing sports photos. Since we have a bigger paper in this county (as he does with New Ulm), I don't try to write great sports stories. But, I'm writing them, not somebody else.

I've long been suspicious, sociologically, of people who claim to work 100 hours a week and say it's metaphorical, not literal. Here's why.

If you worked 15 hours a day six days a week, you'd still have to work 10 hours on Sunday to work 100 hours a week. And, that means the 15 hours a day includes a real working lunch at your desk, or else an actual half an hour or hour of extra work. Taking that specific to a small newspaper? You can't sell ads on Sunday. You can finish stories and layout, and editing freelancers, tis true. You can do paperwork. But, if you have enough of that backlogged to Sunday, are you disorganized?

In other words, he's either REALLY disorganized, or else we're in big swinging dick lie claims about "I work 100 hours a week." And, yes, often, it's not just lies, but big swinging dick lies. 

(Update: Per a piece in the second story I did about him, he's got 500 subscribers. So, circulation work isn't that much, nor is delivery to stores for rack sales. Ads probably aren't THAT much work and are more "over the counter" than Zion's cold-calling.)

Next, if you're really that beloved in the community, unless your profitability is that skimpy, you could hire somebody part-time for some of this work. Lee, I know that, you know that, and the doorknob knows that. I suspect that's why, almost two months after throwing this out there, you've not had a taker.

Next, why aren't you selling it to your publishing group, instead? And, yes, folks, Lee Zion isn't totally totally alone. The Lafayette Nicollet Ledger, per its website, is part of a five-newspaper group. (Four plus a shopper, to be precise.)

Well, hold on to THAT thought. According to the Minnesota Newspaper Association's current member directory, the other three plus shopper are now part of Van Hee Media. Lafayette ain't, and has no "news group" affiliation listed. Maybe Lee Zion got put on an island by Jeff and Michelle Van Hee? Here's his profile on LinkedIn.  Their papers also have new websites listed and are not part of the now-former? Prairie Publishing. (Bizapedia had another point person listed for Prairie as of 1 year ago.) Well, no. Those are "mirror" URLs for Prairie Publishing. And their own website URL doesn't load. I don't know what's behind this, but I suspect some sort of fire behind the smoke. And, yes, I definitely see the above as smoke, and even perhaps smoke that smells of Denmark. The plot thickens more with more Googling. Michelle Van Hee is on Muck Rack ... and (drum roll) listed as having written for the Nicollet Ledger!

Next, I'm looking at one of his e-editions.

10 pages. Not sure how to count billing on the single page of graduates on page 10, as I don't know what the Lions paid to put their logo on that page. Interesting that that is NOT part of a graduation special section.

Not counting it as paid at all and setting aside the page entirely? 2 1/2 pages of 9 pages on adhole, not counting obits because I don't know if they're paid or not. (I've moved back away from counting them as part of an adhole in general.) The larger of my papers does well over that as an ad percentage, in part having a local grocery, in non-summer issues. The smaller runs above that on 8 pages.

He's missing some ad tricks. Like no sports booster pages, for No. 1. (Baseball season was still on in his first week of June issue, albeit ending.) Especially if someone is shooting sports pix for him.

He's running too many puzzles, and too long a community calendar, No. 2. He could whack a page (assuming he can run tighter) right there.

Going through current e-editions? 

Two of the other three non-shoppers in that group (IF it's still a group) are SMALLER! As in SIX pages. (And, together, their circ doesn't quite match the Ledger. Tiny!) Sounds like some consolidation is needed is the issue. (Even Madalia, the bigger by ads etc paper, has only the same circ.)

Also, I'd want to know your paper's relationship to the others, per the "smoke."

Then, I'd want to know your background in the business. What were you doing before? I don't see a LinkedIn profile for you. Why did you buy it? How much did you pay? And, how profitable is profitable?

Because more red, or at least yellow, flags have been raised. I see no wife or children mentioned in any of the stories. If you're going into debt to do this, either your paper has made TINY profits or else, even paying off any note to buy the paper, you're not a good manager of personal finances. Second, going into debt to do something like this at age 34 would raise eyebrows. Doing so at age 54? Have you become so burned out that your mental health is in question? Are you hoping for an Ambrose Bierce like denouement to your life? (I personally think Bierce never got to Mexico and speculation that he committed suicide at the Grand Canyon seems likely correct.)

Then, there's one other issue in the Guardian's piece. I've written editorial columns that have been close to "in your face" on political stances. Just wrote one in this week's issue on guns and Texas' social media law, and got lucky that a weird five-justice majority on the Supreme Court still understands the First Amendment. I have NEVER written one that is personally offensive, let alone offering a sexual come-on to my female readership.

Finally, you're 35 miles from Mankato and 80 miles from the Minneapolis part of the Twin Cities. If no laid-off or semi-retired journos are taking you up, there's probably a reason why. Maybe part of it is that despite the "take my paper" claims being straightforward, there's strings attached, like Dave Lewis at Pilot Point, Texas, saying "take over my paper."

So, that's me being a skeptical newspaper editor, Lee Zion.

"Commie" paper's "owners" get sucker-punched, in part by selves

That's my take on what appears to be the definite hiatus and possible death of the Akron Devil Strip, as reported by Laura Hazard Owen at Niemen Lab.

It billed itself as Akron's first "community-owned magazine," hence the "Commie" in scare quotes. More specifically, per a presumed quote from its website by Owen?

It claimed to be the “first community-owned local news cooperative in the United States.”

OK, we'll get to those "owners" being in scare quotes in just a minute.

Whoever runs its Twitter said on Oct. 15: We ain't got money. Oh, and our founder took a self-imposed sabbatical a month ago.

NOW, per Owen, we get to those "owners," who allegedly owned the "means of production," but in reality?

In becoming a co-op in 2019, The Devil Strip said its “vested co-owners” (each of whom had donated at least $330) would be able to “vote on important issues” about the magazine, following “the ‘one person, one share, one vote’ principle.” But those co-owners — there were 94 of them — weren’t told The Devil Strip was in financial trouble, much less consulted on a path forward.

Oops.

I put out a trio of Tweets when reading this. First:

"Get it in writing" is a mandate in both law and journalism and it sounds like the Akron Devil Strip, and its alleged "co-owners," failed on both counts 1/x thread .@akrondevilstrip .@NiemanLab .@laurahazardowen .@mediagazer https://t.co/BRF6hpIdKX

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 19, 2021

Many of the "owners" were whining, per Owen:

In the comments of The Devil Strip’s Facebook page, readers expressed confusion: “What’s the point of a co-op if the people have no say?” one wrote. Another: “What? Not even a chance for us owners to help raise additional funds?” 

“No indication at the annual meeting over the summer of 2021 that there was concern, but no financial recap despite my request before the meeting,” another co-owner recalled.

Gee, if you'd thought of something like my first Tweet, in advance?

The three remaining Devil Strip board members launched a Go Fund Me. (Of course they did.) And, despite many people saying "Fool me once ..." 60 suckers ponied up nearly $5K in the first six hours.

Tweet 2 gets to that and that sabbatical by Chris Horne.

Why would these "alleged co-owners" invest more? That said, if they DO invest more, and without contractual paperwork, alert P.T. Barnum. And who let Chris Horne get to this point in the first place? Did Knight Foundation, Lenfest, etc. have no paperwork-based accountability? 2/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 19, 2021

But wait, it gets better, per Owen:

In addition to revenue from its members, The Devil Strip had received a total of $589,652 in philanthropic funding as of the end of 2020, according to its Donors page. Some of the larger contributors to that pool of funds included the Knight Foundation, which gave a total of $225,000 as of the end of 2020, and the Lenfest Foundation on behalf of the Facebook Journalism Project, which gave $100,000. Any 2021 donations are not listed on The Devil Strip’s site.

Gee, I'd like some of that, I said.

.@knightfdn .@lenfestinst Will you send me money to start a co-op newspaper? I'll give you the details later. 3/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 19, 2021

So, Knight, Lenfest etc. got suckered by someone who probably has bipolar disorder as part of what's behind him, and at the same time, were apparently suckers themselves with their seed money? Got it.

Meanwhile, who would trust the three remaining members of the board of directors, the ones who organized the Go Fund Me? Presumably, they had a hand in persuading Hodge to escort himself out the door and said nothing. Presumably, they had at least a glimpse of the financial problems and said nothing. (Or else they knew nothing, troubling itself.) They talk about recovering access to emails. Had Hodge locked them out? They say nothing. They promised the 60 new suckers nothing new in terms of legal language, AFAIK.

And, was there a need for it? Sure, the Beacon Journal is Gannett, but there's some sort of weekly, an alt-weekly, I guess, and a monthly lifestyles mag, per Wiki. Well, no, the Journal was a Black paper, not an alt-weekly, Google says, but it may have folded. There's also a non-alt-weekly which looks pretty decent on its website, AND a university paper.

That's a crowded journalism environment to be entering in today's world.

And, speaking of that apparently now shuttered Black paper? In the second menu bar, the black-stripped one, the Devil Strip has a link to "Black-owned businesses in Akron." But, on the "About" page? The staff you're invited to meet are all White. And, judging by them mainly having humanities degrees if not journalism ones? Upper-middle class parents. City-Data says Blacks are 30 percent of Akron itself and 15 percent of Summit County. People of other races or identifying as multiracial are another 12 percent of the city and 10 percent of the county. (There are no Hispanics or Asians on the Devil Strip staff, either.)

The "mag"? Its content at its website? From what I saw, it was written for exactly their own community, not the Akron community.

That would lead to the final question, and one purely rhetorical: What community were you expecting or wanting to "own" this paper? Back at Nieman, Joshua Benton has your number.

Seriously. Sounds like a whole lot of suckerdom out there.

I'm White myself, and have a professional graduate degree, but by money, economic class? My parents were nowhere near upper middle class. And, I don't identify with those people.

Small town Texas editors and reporters, get a non-football life, year 2!

I wrote about everything in the header, minus "year 2," a year ago.

If you click the link, you'll see the details of what prompted me. TLDR version? Small town Texas newspaper editors whose god is football, not school board meetings, thinking they need to make sure their own stats at games are more accurate than the team's.

Get a life.

Even more, get a life, since a staff assistant, even at small schools, now has an iPad tracking EVERY SINGLE PLAY with software that will produce a box score page complete with FULL stats. You'll ALSO get a complete drive-by-drive page, as good as college and pro games on ESPN.

Get a life!

Dear newspaper publishers: About those postal rate hikes

Per the poll at top right, let's dig in.

First, I know the periodicals mail rate hikes aren't likely to fully stand as is. But, they're likely to at least 50 percent stand. The old days are over. (Note that first-class mail, for the first ounce, faces approximately the same hike.)

So, per that poll, if this truly improves service on out-of-county delivery, will you accept it?

That said, in challenging the Postal Regulatory Commission, what will they actually do with that nearly 7 percent other than just cut a deficit?

Third, are you continuing to challenge Congress to end the pension prefunding requirement? (Actually bipartisan legislation could do just that, but Postmaster General Louis DeJoy facing a subpoena over campaign finance violations at a former private business of his could screw the pooch.) If not, why not?

Unfortunately, no amount of Googling will reveal the cost to mail newspapers as a percentage of a non-dailiy newspaper's overall expenses. 

I know from my own experience as an editor-publisher at two small papers, though, that mailing expenses are not THAT much of a newspaper's overall budget.

Facebook group pretending to be newspaper: Been there, done that

 I remember a Facebook group in Marlin running rumor as fact, but NOTHING like what is reportedly happening in Beaver Falls and Beaver Township, Pennsylvania.

I had a pair of regular weekly papers in a county of less than 25,000 that did a reasonable job of actual news reporting. It's a shame that the paper there, in a county of 170K, was sold to Craphouse.

The rest of the story is totally unsurprising, even though the paper says it's hiring two new staff.

When in Marlin and Falls County, I probably ran three or four op-ed columns that shot down the worst of the rumors. Problem is that, there's sometimes solid info on such a site. The real problem is that when the actual newspaper reports a story and a fair chunk of the populace doesn't want to accept it, and then spins new rumors. Like police in Chippewa Township, I've been accused of being part of a conspiracy.

That then said, we had plenty of bad cops in Marlin. But, the conspiracy thinking on the Facebook group wasn't just about policing matters.

The newest cheap-assedness from Wick Communications

 Regular readers here may recall that I've written about Wick, and the cheap-assedness angle, before.

The newest? From JournalismJobs, this "journalism product manager" position.

First, some snootiness that seems kind of typical of Wick.

No, the job title is not a typo. (If you don't know what a typo is, stop reading now.)

Then, the job itself.

Wick Communications is expanding its NABUR initiative, which combines community journalism with reader engagement via our own social media platform. NABUR, or Neighborhood Assisted Bureau Reporting, offers aspects of investigative reporting/feel-good local news combined on a site similar to Nextdoor or Facebook Groups. This project is funded in part by the Google News Initiative.

Basically, that sounds like a rewrite of what gets posted on FB Groups. Groups dedicated to an individual city can be a boon, but they can usually be a rumor-mongering pile of shit, based on personal past experience at multiple newspapers.

Second, "feel good" news is nowhere near investigative reporting.

Third, if it IS your own proprietary social media platform, how many people are members of it?

Fourth, per what I said above, Sierra Vista's site sounds like the rumors, or innuendos, are monged indeed.

Fifth, again, I wouldn't mind going to Montrose, but ... again, I'd want to know why Californication stopped there, assuming its population is still flat, and other things.

Sixth? Like other small former dailies, they're still doing a daily e-edition. Why? In all likelihood, you will never again be a daily print paper. You're wasting staff time and energy. And, if they're really still a five day daily in print, per my original post, why? (They cut from six days a week this spring.)

Unfortunately, their paywall is so hard I can't tell if they're still five days in print, or just five days in e-editions. Nor can I tell how many pages they're pushing.

"Pink slime" journalism: both conservatives and liberals do it

Excellent piece by Columbia Journalism Review, following up on a report it did about the Tow Center and other folks. The biggest takeaways from CJR:

1. This problem has grown a lot since the original Tow piece.

2. Per a link to Open Secrets, although this started as a conservative to wingnut-conservative project, liberals are doing it, too. One biggie is the group behind the Shadow vote-tabulation app of infamy from the Iowa Democratic caucus. Another is Pantsuit Nation, obvious Hillbot folks. So, we're talking neoliberals. A third group also gets George Soros PAC money. (Cue wingnut conspiracy theories.)

3. What CJR doesn't mention is that, primarily for capital reasons, leftists aren't. (That said, CJR's general failure to distinguish liberal and leftist is itself an issue.)

4. The original "pink slime" wasn't necessarily partisan as much as it was cheap hypercapitalism.

5. Wanna know who's doing this in Texas? Page 11 of this link. Metric Media and Local News Network are conservative as are Record.

Missing from the CJR account is the problem with this much capitalism sloshing in the system. Missing are accounts of how doing these fake news sites rather than spending this money on ad buys further undercuts community newspapers which both duopoly parties give lip service to helping.

The death of the printing press next?

As people in the newspaper biz know, more and more community-type non-daily papers are simply shutting down. More and more small dailies, and even some big ones, have cut back to a non-daily print schedule. Some 30 have outrightly closed, and that doesn't count non-COVID, "regular" declining newspaper industry closures; I know of two this year within 100 miles of me.

So, printing press owners have fewer customers, and the ones remaining have fewer print jobs.

Meaning that printing press owners are themselves hurting.

And getting cutthroat in some of the discounts they'll offer.

A decade ago, it was still a commonplace-type observation that many small newspapers were being bought in part for their printing presses.

Now? What if you bought a press, whether by itself or with the "cover buy" of a group of newspapers, and you've still got outstanding debt on that? Yeah, you feel you have to keep your press running, but ... if you discount enough to take new jobs, you're running harder to stand in place.

IMO, it might be better to not chase new jobs for less money, and if necessary, file for the Paycheck Protection Program. If you qualify, the next step would to see about refinancing that loan, maybe? The next step after that, or maybe before, might be to at least start some discreet feelers for possible sale.

The end of a newspaper era

It looks like Today Newspapers, a group of south suburban Dallas newspapers, and my employer for most the last 9 and 1/2 years, less an eight-month hiatus, is now history.

Editor's note: This blog was a "draft" that I saw in my "drafts" section. I saw it there, and figured I may well have published another version, at the time. But, with it being the 10-year anniversary, and change, of Today Newspapers closing, it was good to actually publish this, even if it's "again."

Causes? Many.

The recession and the newspaper economy in general.

Others in particular? South suburban Dallas is tough. The Dallas Morning News never even tried to run a free-standing paper here, other than their (subsidized?) freebie tabs they do now in different parts of the Metroplex.

At the same time, in a Tar Baby style dysfunctional relationship, many civic leaders in the “Best Southwest” suburbs have, for years, done what I call “whoring after the Morning News,” riffing on the Old Testament prophets’ comments about Israel “whoring after the Ba’als.”

Schadenfreude, in a large glass says, Fine, now you have the News, or either a small daily paper with unaudited circulation which doesn’t run school lunch menus, honor rolls and more, to cover your area.

And, some of the problems were peculiar to our staff. Without going into details, or throwing people too far under the bus, we never did get much in the way of online ad sales from our staff, who never seemed that interested in learning more about doing online sales, sales techniques for online ads, etc. (Of course, one of our ad reps claimed she could always get a job up at the News, which wasn’t likely even before all of its cuts.)

I do feel sorry for people in our area who will miss us and know what they’re missing. As for the rest, no.

Beyond that, I’ve been wanting out of newspaper journalism more and more. If I have to stay in it shorter-term, fine. But, I know there are other things that better fit my skills and acumen, even if I didn’t go to the right Ivy League or other school.

Unfortunately (perhaps) this part was sadly wrong, even as I have not only not gotten out of the papers biz, but once for sure (IMO) have faced age discrimination within it.

ADDENDUM a decade later: One other cause? Marlon Hanson's Focus Daily News. When you have your pressmen (almost all of whom, if not every one, a decade ago, probably lacking green cards and not being citizens) also do your delivery driving at a five-day daily while you own the press and its old and crappy but you don't care because you want to be a daily so you can exploit your old Dallas Times Herald national ad contacts, even while you lie about your circulation which was never audited, even with the massive loopholes it had, by the old ABC before it changed names and then went out of the circulation audit business, it's hard to compete with that. (Hanson claimed a higher circ than, by my guesstimates, the Snooze had in the Best Southwest; part of it, in my guesstimate and by what I saw on many lawns, was that he was doing a Total Market Circulation/shopper type angle, but rather than total saturation every week, was doing a rotated selective saturation. I know this because two years later, I interviewed at the Rio Rancho Observer and its owner explicitly said he did that, dividing Rio Rancho into four quadrants for his weekly and doing one quadrant each week on a TMC free throw.)

Moser strikes again!

Just two months after the Sulphur Springs News-Telegram's parent, Southern Newspapers, was reportedly going to shut the press there and move the pressmen to the older press at its sister paper in Paris, Moser Community Media, which owns the neighboring paper in Mount Pleasant, has bought it.

With extensive time at Southern, and knowing Moser, here's a few thoughts.

1. Within six months, SS will move from a tri-weekly to a semi-weekly, as MtP is now.

2. The magazine in SS will cut back to bi-monthly, if not quarterly. I don't think Moser will kill it, but he's not a fan of mags.

3. Special sessions will increase.

4. The agricultural tabloid run out of Sulphur Springs, Country World? That could increase. Southern was complete idiots with it, never trying to get other papers in their chain to sell into it, then at the local level, eventually firing its long-time ad rep. Moser may well address the former head-on. I could see that bumping from 16 to 20 pages if done right.

5. Rather than a local magazine, with the amount of papers he now owns in NE Texas, the SS magazine might become something regional, and becoming a locally printed tab, not an outsourced slick.

Why did Southern buy Sulphur Springs in the first place? Per others, I agree that former Paris publisher J.D. Davidson talked them into it. Davidson is also responsible for the current ME being there, and many former employees wonder why. Stay tuned on that issue, as far as what changes Moser makes editorially. A person with long media experience, at a TCU journalism conference last Friday, was not impressed by the paper there, and I may be understating things.

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Update: Within three weeks, Moser has whacked the six-page second section of the 18-page, 3x a week paper. The one section will print on three days a week, which cuts press hours. And, they're kind of upset on the press, especially since they may have lost at least one contract print job, for whatever reason.

Papers will now be mail only. Deadlines for the post office will be a lot easier to meet with just one section. But, that means contract carriers are all gone. It also means that circulation is very much a part-time position. Other cuts have been made or will be made.

I got out very much at the right time. So did others who left.

None of this surprises me.

I say that paper could be a five-day daily, especially with Moser running Mount Pleasant as well. Cross-pollination on news coverage abounds on sharing local news relevant to the other city, regional news that just one of the two papers can cover, etc.

And you could do this within a mail delivery system for the post office while getting rid of carriers.

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Update 2, June 14: In six weeks, Moser has partially paywalled the paper, something Southern and its Deputy Dawg ITers, led by Greg Monroe, couldn't get around to doing in two years.

Take a pass on Wick Communications

A couple of blog posts ago, I asked, rhetorically, "How do you run a daily paper without an AP wire?"

As I interviewed at said paper, and as it hasn't hired me, I'm going to "decloak" that previous blog post and let you read in detail who I was talking about.

Obviously, the parent company is Wick Communications. Below, most the rest of that old post, paper locations revealed.

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I'm not talking a five-day daily, where that wouldn't be that hard.

I'm talking six- and seven-day dailies, where it would be, unless you tighten page count, drop a day of the week or both.

I recently interviewed to be managing editor of the Montrose Press. Wick's stable includes one seven-day daily, one that ... sounds like was a seven-day and now it's now six-day and is being delivered by USPS, interestingly and five or six other six-day dailies, all 3,000 circ or above.

Demographic background? Montrose, Colorado is about 19K. County is 42K. Montrose was "discovered" and presumably "Californicated" in the 2000-2005 period. City pop jumped from 13K to 19K. Froze after the Great Recession, and interestingly, has stayed frozen since; the Californication was a one-off.

Note: I'm going to drop some new updates in here based on a close direct comp with the Gainesville (Texas) Daily (until COVID, in print) Register. Gainesville is 16K in a county of 40K.

Page run? 12-14 a day, I was told, on weekdays. Dunno about the weekender. Since, interestingly, it's a 6 day AM, not PM, there isn't a weekender, to be technical. It's Tuesday-Sunday.

Gainesville, pre-COVID, was a five-day daily in print. Usually 8 pages Tuesday and Wednesday; 12 on Thursday, IIRC, because it still (WHY?) ran weekly TV guide in print. Then 10 Friday and 12, IIRC, weekender.

So, Montrose, with no Colorado equivalent of something as wide as the Texas Tribune? Even though it was more of a regional center than Gainesville (which is only 30 miles from Denton)? Two pages a day too many, arguably, even WITH the wire. Definitely needed to cut two without it, and pre-COVID, cut a day of the week, probably.

Company policy is to can the AP wire. Not as in "someday," but "we're doing it." Related to that is the usual "digital first" etc. blather. Which is what it is.

First, they don't have a separate online-only subscription. I know a lot of smaller dailies do a forced combo buy of print plus digital but if you're really digital first, that itself is bullshit. (That said, assuming they use Blox as their website content platform, I don't know how easy it is to set Blox up to do that. On the other hand, given that Blox comes from Lee Enterprises, owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, surely it's doable.)

So, do you cut a day a week? Same sked but cut two pages a day? IMO, yes, that second option at a minimum. Filling 12-14 pages in a county of less than 50K without a wire and typical smaller six-day editorial staff? Uhhhhhh ...

See above. Tuesday-"weekend" five-day daily. Say, 10 pages on Tuesday, 12 on Wednesday with it being shopper flier day. Back to 10 on Thursday. Then 12 on Friday with weekend sports previews and 12 or 14 on weekend.

There are ways around this. One can either cut two pages a day, or one day a week. I speak from personal knowledge.

My current six-day baby is in a town 3/4 the size and a county 4/5 the size of the one at which I interviewed. At my previous semiweekly, the nearest daily was a small seven-day in a town and county both half again as big as Montrose.

My current six-day runs 10 pages on weekdays. On average, 1/2-3/4 a page a day of news, maybe a bit more, and 1/4-1/2 of sports is wire. That seven-day, to my best memory, usually ran 12 on Mondays, 14-16 the next four and Saturdays. It ran one full page or bit more a day of news wire and probably 1/2-3/4 day of sports wire.

So, yes, unless one wants to use cheapie brief sites like State Point, or canned product-placement copy from a place like NAPS, or third, hope your state extension office has plenty of non-ag consumer news, etc., cutting two pages a day is ... a no-brainer.

It's even more a no-brainer with the Trump paper tariffs, which also offer said company the perfect excuse to cut either two pages a day or one day a week, whichever is deemed better.

"Dear Readers: Due to the ongoing Trump tariffs, and their threat to the profitability of this newspaper, we have had to make some painful decisions.

"One of them is cutting two pages of the paper each day.

"In order to keep the same amount of local content as before, we are getting rid of our Associated Press service. Given that we are a community newspaper, and we only ran selected items from the Associated Press in the past, and will look for other sources for state of Colorado and Four Corners news outside the AP, we think this is the best way to provide the best community news content to you our readers."

Now, that said, if your state press association doesn't have at least a weekly roundup column, while national wire might not be a biggie, some state news, especially in-depth state lege coverage while it's in session, to me is de rigeur. That's even more the case if you're running a seven-day daily and there's a bigger seven-day daily next county over. That's true of Montrose and the Colorado press association, or Wick's core in Arizona. (more on that below.)

On the other hand, in a location like Montrose, dumping the wire might not be the smartest. Are the Californicators going to be as interested in a paper without state wire? Or regional Western news? If they can read a header and first 100 words of local news on your website, you may lose them. I don't know. (Remember, no wire means no wire on web as well as print.)

See note above about no Colorado equivalent to the Texas Tribune.

Anyway, with papers bigger than Montrose either narrowing their web on the pages, cutting pages or cutting staff because of the newsprint tariffs (which Congressional bills going nowhere won't stop if they're going nowhere), keeping the same page count without a wire is simply stupid.

That said, the parent company doesn't seem brilliant.

Wick's flagship is Sierra Vista, Arizona, home of Fort Huachuca. It has a six-day daily at Lake Havasu, but that's far away. Much closer, it has weeklies and a semiweekly in SE Arizona; it and a presumably LARGE weekly in a town of 15K are in what should be a hub relationship with Sierra Vista; specifically, Nogales is the semi-weekly in a town of over 20,000 and Douglas is a large weekly.

But, a much bigger seven-day daily, Tucson's Arizona Daily Star, is 75 miles away. If I were it, I might roll the dice and start trying to poach subscribers at the edge Sierra Vista radius. If I really wanted to roll the dice, I might figure that Cochise County is big enough for me to open a bureau (one-person) there. (Douglas is also there; Nogales is due south of Tucson in Santa Cruz County and actually as close to Tucson as to Sierra Vista in miles, and shorter in drive time.) I might add an ad person full-time in Sierra Vista, too. Maybe even a regional sectional 1x or 2x a week. Douglas should be a semiweekly, IMO, and old jokes aside, why Nogales isn't a triweekly, if not a five-day daily, no idea. Santa Cruz County is almost 50K. If the Arizona Daily Star pushed hard enough, it could probably blow up that whole house of cards.

With Sierra Vista a military town, cutting sports wire as well as news wire? My guess would be that's going to definitely hurt print circulation.

(I also saw nothing about Spanish-language papers in Wick's stable; that SHOULD be a no-brainer. Get one reporter who can write some Spanish and translate English and have them do a semi-weekly that combines material from all three of those papers. If Nogales and/or Douglas are deemed too heavily Hispanic and/or too poor to expand English-language papers, to me, that seems a no-brainer that probably should have been done long ago. If someone else has a Hispanic paper in either locale, or Sierra Vista, Wick should have bought it long ago.)

And, that gets to one way you can get rid of the wire more easily — clustering. Not necessarily immediately next door, but increased clustering within a state. That lets you do a state-level version of Gannett's state-by-state daily news roundup. Wick is actually in position to do this in Arizona. With one or two buys in either North or South Dakota, or both, it could do it in one or both of those states, especially since it has the South Dakota capital paper in Pierre.

But ... I doubt Wick is that forward thinking, even though it's in a position to do so in one place.

And, not to be too immodest, but ... I could be a great newspaper company consultant. Companies would just have to pay me to tell them at times that I think they've been stupid, then challenge them to tell me why I'm wrong.

Also, at least one paper in the chain doesn't include special sections for subscribers. No, really ...

All subscriptions may include up to six premium issues per year. For each premium issue, your account balance will be charged an additional fee of $2 in the billing period when the section publishes. This will result in shortening the length of your billing period. …  These (listed but deleted by me) months will have the effect of reducing the length of delivery service otherwise covered by your payment. Months are subject to change without notice. You may choose to opt-out of receiving premium issue content by calling xxxxxxxx

OK now. (I can't remember which paper that is; I think it's one of their North Dakota dailies.)

Nickel and dime time.

It's not unethical, in that it's printed up front. But 3,000 subscribers x $2 x four quarters a year? $25,000 or so out of what should be, oh, $1.25 million gross revenue easy? Three percent is not nothing, but it's not a lot.  Throw in the progress issue and the city/county guide issue free to subscribers and save your bookkeeper and circ staff some hassle if nothing else.

Otherwise, on the double no-brainer vs. reality? Let's just say I've visited Glassdoor as well. The answers I got, as mentioned in the italicized paragraph, didn't surprise me.

To go into detail? I am leery of a company that has less than, say a 3.3 rating out of 5 stars on Glassdoor. Knowing newspaper struggles, I would be OK taking that down to 3.0 for papers.

Wick as a corporation didn't even hit that.

This might be a good point to refer you back to my MSM bingo, community newspapers division, blog post.

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Sidebar —

That said, I wouldn't write this much about the Montrose Press if I didn't know something about Montrose. I do; Montrose wouldn't be a bad place to live. I also know something about Mountain/Intermountain West towns being discovered, even being full-blown Californicated.

Taos is a good, or bad, example of that. On a small city scale, arguably Fanta Se is, too.

That said, in Nuevo Mexico, I also know the other end of the stick. A decade or so, Silver City had the first nibbles of being "discovered" but that's all that happened. It was more rumors than reality and it continues to lose population. Maybe Californicators thought it was too isolated, though it's only 2 hours from Las Cruces. Maybe local civic fathers planted rumors to try to make reality happen.

Last time I was in Montrose was at the tail end of the Californication or whatever. As it was mid-Census, I didn't realize it had grown that much, though I did note the amount of traffic surprised me.

And, now, it's a puzzler. Why did the Californication stop? Was it entirely due to the housing bubble bursting? If so, why hasn't it restarted again, as it has in, say, Bend, Oregon?

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Sidebar 2 —

Said job has been readvertised a month after initially advertised. Maybe others, like me, said "huh" about the dropping the wire but not dropping the pages, or other things?