The Daily Courier makes an offer we shouldn't refuse.

It is a friendly overture from the newspaper next door:

"Hello there, Medford. It’s great to meet you.

You, too, Central Point, Jacksonville, Eagle Point, Phoenix, Talent and Ashland.

Welcome to the Daily Courier.

With Friday’s death of the Medford Mail Tribune, we hope you’ll embrace us as a source of local and regional news."

This is my home town's iteration of the nationwide re-ordering of the media. At best it is the "creative destruction" of capitalism, as old systems are destroyed by more efficient ones. Right now it feels like pure and simple destruction. Less is less.

The strangeness of the the neighboring city's newspaper offering to service Medford is partly one of scale. My Jackson County has three times the population Josephine County. Josephine County has been rural, poor, and anti-government. It is the kind of place that the New York Times' Nick Kristof writes about--rural centers of White poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, and early death. That isn't everybody, of course, but there is a lot of it there. Their school districts qualify for free lunches for all students. Voters in rural Josephine County refuse to vote themselves a public fire department, so they have a patchwork subscription service, or no service at all. They vote down budgets for a sheriff department, so there is almost no law enforcement in the rural area. Illegal marijuana grow-sites hidden in forested areas have been common for decades. The voters there are bright red, voting almost two to one for Trump.

Meanwhile, Jackson County is the regional market center and medical center, the place with the regional airport, and until just now, the place with the multi-faceted media of television stations and a large newspaper. Jackson County has its share of rural poverty, but it also supports a large, prosperous middle class that political observers would lump in with "suburban" voters and "soccer moms." We were the "normal" America.

Now our country cousin is offering to rescue us. I am OK with that. We need their rescue.

Earlier posts here mentioned public notices--those colorless blocks of text announcing probates, foreclosures and proposed zone changes. I described them as a potential baseline revenue source for some future local newspaper. I was thinking about what was necessary for a newspaper to be viable. I wasn't thinking about about the legal needs of entities to post that notice. I am installing a vineyard on about 8 acres of my farm. I am doing something simple, moving two acres of water rights from one side of a drainage ditch to the other. I am required to post a notice in an official "newspaper of record" that serves the area of my farm. This isn't optional. 

Problem: There isn't a newspaper of record there or anywhere around it. 

Public notices are a big deal. The Daily Courier is a conservative newspaper, but it does report on the Josephine County Commissioners. The commissioners are unhappy with the scrutiny. They have a powerful weapon: Stop using the Courier as their newspaper of record. They are threatening to use a tiny micro-newspaper in a neighboring city. It is a powerful threat, eliminating a significant revenue source. Local Democrats in Josephine County--they do exist in small numbers--have sounded an alarm. I received this by email.

The Daily Courier's editor makes an offer. He wrote that they will cover Medford and Jackson County if we get readers and subscribers here. That sounds fair to me. I have subscribed.

Here is the full text of what the editor wrote:

The Daily Courier: http://thedailycourier.com

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