The headline tells the story.
Out-of-state readers can see this as just another iteration of a national story: Local newspapers are closing down. This week it was our turn. But for people who have read the Mail Tribune for decades, it is like the death of an old friend.
This isn't sudden. We have been watching the Mail Tribune die from starvation and mistreatment. The paper has gotten thinner, and local stories fewer. Then it went from seven-day print, to four-day print, to all digital. It became thinner yet. It became a collection of national stories written by far-away people, published in far-away newspapers. The Tribune has been in hospice. Seeing it shrunken and barely aware of the world around it, we don't really mourn its death. It had already stopped living.
People who read the Tribune for decades told me that they barely glanced at it now. "I just read it for the obituaries," one fellow-Rotarian told me. He had heard about it shutting down by text message a few minutes before he showed me his phone. That exemplifies part of what killed the Tribune. I got breaking news from a friend's phone, who got the word from a friend who saw it on a Facebook post by a soon-to-be unemployed employee of the paper.
I comment on politics but what I do isn't local journalism. Communities need local journalism, with reporters and editors. News needs to be curated. Events need to be put into context. A citizen who attends a two-hour school board or city council meeting sees something. However, the meaning of what a person sees is only apparent if a person knows the people and issues involved. A reporter and editor who have been putting in the time to follow the story can put it into context.
All is not lost. The Tribune's absence clears the way for new options. One is that the local TV stations have news departments. The kind of news that fits in a "news, sports, and weather" TV format is visual, not analytical, but TV stations have websites. With the Tribune gone there may be much more traffic to them. Advertisers need audiences and TV websites need advertisers. News can attract an audience. People who click on a link to see a weather forecast might see a written news story on construction delays at Hillcrest and Foothills Road. Those are the kinds of stories that newspapers used to run, back when they had reporters. On TV perhaps it would be necessary to have a video of a flagger holding a bright orange "slow" sign and an excavator putting dirt into a dump truck. But on a website, maybe just the story is enough.
There is another potential option. In the aftermath of the closing of the Ashland Daily Tidings, a group of citizens organized an on-line community newspaper using a business model similar to public radio or public TV. Their website, www.Ashland.news, has a mix of subscribers paying voluntarily, major donors, and advertisers. Public broadcasting shows that people will voluntarily pay for content they value. The growth of independent journalists writing on Substack is another demonstration that this business model can work. People are now accustomed to paying for electronic content. Ashland.news gets paid by the City of Ashland to run public notice announcements. They have 2,000 subscribers and 15,000 unique page views every month. So far it is working and building.
What is possible in Ashland may not be possible elsewhere in Jackson County, but the Medford area has assets to bring to the table of local journalism. The county has 225,000 people with a need for local news. It is a market, health, and transportation center for the region. A new institution would not be burdened by debt, a need to show a profit, or legacy real estate and printing equipment. Possibly something much bigger and better than Ashland.news is possible. There is opportunity and there are resources. I will be watching and helping.
If something starts to jell I will keep readers of this blog informed.
Tomorrow: I will comment on what I think killed the Tribune. Foolish decisions by the owner/publisher were only part of it. There are huge forces at work.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: Https://petersage.substack.comSubscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
18 comments:
Newspapers are primarily for advertising. When I worked at a newspaper a million years ago we would block out the ads first and then fill in with stories. Classifieds were a big part of the revenue, jobs, services, stuff for sale, rentals, etc., and most of that is available online.
But I think the real problem is that it is impossible to keep up. When news can be posted virtually in real time, a newspaper becomes archaic. While we may mourn and miss the snap of newsprint, we do have to accept that this was an inevitable result of the internet. It's remarkable that papers have hung on for this long.
Saying that, I'll bet we will see something emerge that will fill the need to be informed about important local events. Democracy dies in the dark.
I too have read the Mail Tribune for decades and am saddened by its demise. I’m afraid the loss of local independent journalism plays into the hands of the fascists who call our free press “the enemy of the people.” Local Republicans must be pleased – now there’s no-one to publicly contradict them with facts when they promulgate such boldfaced lies as Jan. 6 being a “false flag operation” or Biden being an “illegitimate president.”
For other news option besides local TV stations, Jefferson Public Radio is a credible source that does some local investigative reporting. Maybe now they’ll do more.
Newspapers were fundamentally an information distribution system composed of printing presses, ink, paper, trucks, and delivery boys on bicycles. They thrived as long as they were the best information distribution system available
The Internet is quicker and cheaper. Once craigslist took over classified advertising, the handwriting of newspapers’ doom was on the wall.
Here in Portland, the Oregonian still survives, more or less. We subscribe to the online version of it, and because we are fossils, we read it on our iPads in a format that duplicates what a printed newspaper used to look like. 😀
Few understand how the newspaper business works. For printed papers, advertising paid the staff and reporters. Subscribers paid for the printing and delivery of the papers.
Few newspapers adjusted to the internet. The WSJ, NY Times, and New York Times did the right thing by limiting what they shared for free on the Internet. Local papers unfortunately have away the product for too long. Once subscribers declined paying for the news at the local papers, the death knell commenced. Oregonian is next. After moving to Florida in 2019, I continued paying for the expensive replica edition but stopped a few months ago. Simply not enough local content.
I pay for the WSJ, New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Pamplin publications in the Portland Metro area.
I also have subscriptions to several aggregators for the topics that interest me. This despite our library system providing free access to the New York Times and the WSJ.
There are efforts to get Google to start paying for some of the news they make easy to find. They should share those advertising dollars.
Bottom line: good news gathering costs money, and we who want and benefit from that news should be willing to pay.
For Ashlanders there are three on line newspapers I get by email.
Ashland.News
Ashland Chronicle Newsletter (might be weekly)
NewsBreak Ashland (daily).
Each covers some of the same stories and each has different stories.
I also get news on TV network, especially ABC News.
My computer has a news section but is a lot of gossip about Harry, etc.but there are headlines for other things.
And yes, Facebook often has it first. A facebook friend told me first about the Mail Tribune's demise.
I am on three Facebook groups regarding Ashland news and issues.
Then there is NextDoor, tho not reliable for a news source as such.
We will get by and get the news without that right wing rag.
I just hope that the articles on me and others like John Darling are archived and not lost.
I began reading the Mail Tribune in childhood when Eric Allen was the editor, Robert Ruhl the publisher. I began delivering the "Trib" in 1963 when I'd ride over from McLoughlin J.H. and pick up my papers. My route was a bad one, in the area boarded by Oakdale, 10th St, Newtown Av, and 7th Street. (That's Main street for you late arrivals) That route was the first time I had a gun pointed at me, because at 5am on a Sunday I was a suspicious character. That incident got me out of jury duty much later on in life. Thank you Judge Meija. That gun-pointing customer never forgot to pay me though, unlike some of the other "customers" along my route.
I agree with the previous comments and analysis, and am mourning the loss of a longtime friend. The current Sinclair Media ownership did the Trib no favors, but the real demise began one or two owners ago when the newsroom was gutted. Local content really became biased with the Sinclair people always editing in right wing innuendo. As recently as Tuesday for example when the took one last poke at Kate Brown as being unpopular. She did a very good job in a very trying time to protect Oregonians from each other. A splendid job of navigation.
I will miss the Comics, the Suduko, and the Crossword. I mourn the loss of the real newspaper which died in agony 10-12 years ago.
The subscriber model has affected the quality of the news. Media whose economics are based on subscribers do not want to annoy their subscribers, who might then unsubscribe.
The New York Times, for instance, rarely publishes anything disagreeable to their liberal subscribers. Their motto is, “All the news that’s fit to print,” which has come to mean, “All the news that fits the narrative.“
Probably foreseeable when purchased by Sinclair. Recall also the subscription price issue Peter wrote of long ago, and the abandonment of coverage of the county commissioners. There was some change in this during Covid, probably because they didn’t like the Republican board, but I’d long ago thought the MT had turned far too much toward soft social stories and away from hard government reporting.
The fight they had with Peter over subscription prices (threatening to sue!!!) and my family similarly, demanding extra payments in the middle of a year-long subscription, indicated extremely poor management, top down.
I understand the business models have changed. The Eugene Register Guard, once far and away the best newspaper in the state, has decimated itself. The Oregonian helped decimate its city, and long ago ceased being the “Oregonian” but rather a Portland only paper of varying quality.
Ironically, since this is the Mail Tribune’s obituary, that’s what I’ll miss most — the public service of reading obituaries of people in the community.
It sounds like the tech industry is an even bigger job killer than globalism.
Globalism moves jobs to cheaper labor. Tech eliminates labor.
@ miketuba
“As recently as Tuesday for example when the took one last poke at Kate Brown as being unpopular. She did a very good job in a very trying time to protect Oregonians from each other. A splendid job of navigation.”
This is simply not accurate. Poll after poll has shown her as the least — absolute bottom — popular governor in the country, reported many places, many times.
To Sally and Mike Tuba:
Possibly you are both right. Mike spoke to her doing a good job protecting Oregonians from COVID. Sally spoke to her popularity. We all know the phrase "no good deed goes unpunished." She kept COVID protocols in place longer than many Oregonians--especially rural ones who did not think COVID all that serious--wanted. She probably saved lives. A majority of Oregonians were impatient.
I don't think Oregonians in fact intended to murder a few extra people, but it is the nature of the disease that most of the risk was on elderly, overweight people. Those people die anyway, sooner or later. With COVID, a few more will die sooner, but there is randomness. Bottom line, people did not think it was worth it to continue. Some governors made the decision at the beginning of 2021, like Jared Polis of Colorado, that now that people had a chance to vaccinate, being protected was on each individual, not the public. A few extra people died, probably, but kids went back to school and presumably learned more. People were happier.
Some people will say she was wrong and unpopular because of it. Others will say she protected them and are grateful, but recognize that it made her unpopular.
Peter Sage
Jobs lost are jobs lost. Tech has decimated the news industry.
Boycott digital discounts from your local markets. Safeway and Albertsons are trying to dump print ads and offer shopping and discounts via cell phone and internet. All my 80 year old friends barely understand their smart phone let alone an ap. Most watch Television and do not understand or use the internet except for email or playing games if they can afford the internet service cost.
In other words, these large Market chains only offer discounts to those who have money to afford smart phones and internet connection. They discriminate against the poor and elderly. I stand in line and plead old and dumb and eventually the checker and manager breakdown and allow the digital discount without the ap. Boycott their invasion of your privacy and buying decisions.
Print ads! Newspaper inserts. Life blood of the news paper! The Daily Courier still exits…on one leg at a time where I live in Grants Pass. Resist!
She was unpopular because she was a woman who had a brain and looked like a nerd.” Some B@#$h telling us what to do “ I had two friends who died because our commissioners refused to have health workers tested. That is called calculated murder , not an oversight. “They we’re going to die anyway, no shit” May you hurry up and die today .
This comment is too late for anyone to read, but… technology is going to take almost ALL jobs. We humans will be needing a new model of existence way sooner than people think. 100 years? 50? 20? My guess is 50., which means my grandchildren will be in that time period.
I'd like to put in a plug for The Daily Courier. It's been reduced to 5 days of print, but it is not trying to be a printed version of Fox News. Conservative ownership with long-leashed editor who does a good job of generating outrage from both ends of the political spectrum. I'm going to quit muttering about the delivery fee at renewal time.
Local TV news filling the void? That's funny.
Without the MT local TV news won't has as much content.
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