During some of the worst times of my life, daily newspapers were my Zoloft.
They were my Prozac.
They were teachers. They were my counselors. They were my yoga exercises. They were my friends.
In many ways, they were a type of daily prayer.
On days when I felt lost or alone or afraid, I could lose myself and my personal angst in the pages of a newspaper, finding inspiration and elevation in the stories and pictures of human existence — professionally told reality stories touching on science and government, history and the law, sports and entertainment.
And I could rely on that daily source of news to be on the front step or the front sidewalk, every day, as it has since I was a kid.
At 68, I still feel a bit like a kid when I step out on the step each morning, reach down and pick up a packaged piece of the world, displayed in ink on paper. And if just a little bit of that inky reality smudges my hands as I read it page by page at the breakfast table, so much the better.
I like the feel of it, the look of it, the “real” of it.
But there’s change coming. On the morning of Sunday, March 8th, there will be an empty spot on my sidewalk where the Rapid City Journal used to be each Sunday morning, like every other morning.
Depending on the weather and the reliability of the carrier — which, at my place, has generally been good — it was always there, sometimes bigger than others, sometimes newsier than others, sometimes more rewarding than others, but always beckoning with the stories of our time.
There were rare exceptions, of course. A management decision would skip a paper from time to time, to give staff a particular holiday off. Or a blizzard. We’ve missed a few because of them. And once during a paper shortage in the early 1970s, the Journal was a six-day paper, skipping Saturday delivery for months.
Those were short-lived variations in a long-term commitment to daily delivery. To daily news. In ink. On paper.
So I’ll be sad on Sunday, March 8th, when there is no Journal waiting for me out front. The day before, the Journal’s first combined weekend edition will have landed there on the sidewalk, beginning a five-day-a-week system of print-edition delivery at the Journal that will replace the long-standing seven-day delivery.
Print papers from Tuesday through Saturday. Online only on Sunday and Monday.
It’s a cost-saving move that is becoming more common in a daily newspaper world that has been devastated by falling subscriptions and fading advertising. And, even worse, by fading interest in professionally produced news, especially the kind you can hold in your hand, and have to pay for to read.
That has resulted over the last 10 or 15 years in staff layoffs, smaller papers, less news and a continuing downward spiral for a business that once thrived financially.
Many of us think corporate media decision based on illogical-and-excessive profit margins hastened the downward slide. It’s easy to suspect that the busy model for some keep shrinking and keep bleeding formerly successful newspapers until there’s nothing left to shrink and bleed.
I want to believe that’s not true. I want to believe, and hope, that newspaper managers love newspapers as much as I do, and are trying to save them, if in a different form.
And clearly the newspaper business was fading in the face of online realities beyond corporate inclinations.
It’s a tougher place to make a living these days. If it weren’t, somebody would snatch up many of these faltering newspapers and enjoy a profitable business experience themselves. Warren Buffett seemed to acknowledge that reality recently by selling off his newspaper assets to, ironically enough, Lee Enterprises, owner of the Rapid City Journal and dozens of other papers.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, In., had 31 dailies and 49 weeklies, which have also experienced layoffs and financial challenges similar to the Journal’s. Although fond of newspapers, Buffett has also voiced informed concern for the future of the industry, where the elimination of print editions, or certain days of print editions, is becoming more common.
“This is not new. It’s happening across the country,” says David Bordewyk of Brookings, the executive director of the South Dakota Newspaper Association. “It’s where things are headed, and it’s being driven by the realities of sustaining profits. Advertising has declined so much; it’s causing these things to happen.”
The end of seven-day-a-week publishing in print by the Journal puts it in with all the other daily papers in South Dakota, except for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, which still prints seven days a week. Other dailies are five or six days, commonly with combined weekend editions.
Along with saving money on producing, printing, mailing and delivering the Journal two days a week, the change will put more emphasis on the online news offered by the Journal. It’s where the business is headed. It’s where most potential news consumers already are — staring into their cell phones or iPads or home computers.
“We’re in a transformation here and on a path that no one knows for sure where we’re headed,” Bordewyk says. “No one has really figured out the magic bullet in terms of a revenue model that works for newspapers. But beyond that, we need to figure out a revenue format for journalism, regardless of the format its’s delivered in.”
Bordewyk is engaged in the new and the old of news, because along with his SDNA chores, he’s executive director of South Dakota News Watch, a non-profit news organization that works to add well-reported content to the news flow in South Dakota.
The Journal and other papers can use News Watch stories, which help fill in coverage holes left by declining newspaper staffs.
This Journal move five days a week in print is a notable and local part of that search for the magic revenue bullet Bordewyk mentioned. And it’s probably necessary.
I understand that. But I’ll still be sad on March 8. So will my friend and former Journal colleague Steve Miller.
“I feel some grief about it,” Miller says of the change. “It’s grief in terms of the newspaper that was. But I know that’s not realistic. I still grieve for the staff we had in the late ‘80s and early ’90, and the newspaper we had. To me, that was the peak.”
I was lucky enough to be there for that, working for Miller, who was then the managing editor. I was the Journal’s full-time capital reporter in Pierre. We had 12 to 13 full-tine reporters then, and 2 1/2 positions for feature reporters, along with an overall newsroom staff that’s about four times what it is now.
These days there are two full-time reporters at the Journal, a few part-timers and a few other full-time staffers — including Editor Kent Bush — who do a lot of reporting along with their other chores. The paper is working to fill an enterprise reporter’s spot, vacated by the talented Seth Tupper, who joined South Dakota Public Broadcasting in the West River Bureau.
Decimated in number and resources, the Journal staff still put out a newspaper. And most days, they put out good news stories, if much fewer in number.
“Today’s Journal staff, I don’t know hardly any of them,” Miller says. “But I think they do a good job, considering how thin their staff is. I can’t imagine trying to put out a daily newspaper with a staff that small.”
Miller speaks from a position of authority here. He’s a 25-year-Journal newsroom employee in various editor, copy editor and reporter positions. He began his newspaper career as a 14-year-old printer’s devil — sort of an apprentice errand boy and assistant — working for his hometown weekly, the Hamlin County Republican in Castlewood.
Miller still subscribes to and reads the Castlewood paper, and likes to stop in and renew his subscription in person when he’s back home. He’s old school about the news game in many ways, including how he likes to read his newspaper.
“I like holding a newspaper in my hands,” he says. “But I’m 73 years old, and my kind of reader is moving from the scene. So, I think you have to focus on younger people.”
But that must be done while maintaining a commitment to news. And Miller’s hope is that by saving money in printing and delivery costs two days a week, the news reporting staff at the Journal can be sustained and expanded.
“The reporting staff is the most important thing a newspaper has, and always has been,” he says.
Because it’s the news — fact-based, professionally produced news — more than its format, that will really matter to the future of communities and the nation, he says.
“I still think having a good, solid source of professionally produced news that is dependable and as objective as possible, and is as local as possible, I think that’s worth something,” Miller says. “And I hope people are willing to pay for that, in some way. It has a value to me. And I think it has a value to the community and country.”
Miller hopes, as I do, that by following a more restricted printing schedule already followed by smaller dailies in the state, the Journal can sustain itself and even recover some of the news staffing positions that have been lost in recent years.
“That’s the question, can you save enough and divert those savings into improving the news product?” Miller says. “And I sure hope they can. I’m rooting for them to do it. Because we need reliable sources of professional, objective news gathering. And the Journal has historically been that.”
It’s a local story of survival that is being told in one way or another in cities across the nation, Bordewyk says.
“Whatever the format, we need to maintain journalism as you and I and Steve Miller know it — that fact-based journalism,” he says. “If we lose that in this country, we’re in a world or trouble. We just are.”
Because everybody needs a daily newspaper in their life, whether it’s in their hands or on their screens. And it’s the “news” that matters, more than the “paper.”
I know that. But I’ll still be a little sad on the morning of March 8.
