When the Independent Record and the other Montana newspapers are reduced to running stories designed to reassure readers that Lee Enterprises is doing just fine almost weekly, it’s embarrassing and not terribly convincing.
The latest story goes beyond embarrassment to absurdity. Why? Because despite reading like a personal message from the interim publisher to the readers, it’s just boilerplate copy, probably appearing in every Lee paper across the country. It’s one thing to claim that newsrooms are being cut without sacrificing coverage or that reductions in the paper’s size are temporary responses to a challenging economy, but it’s quite another, in the age of easy Internet access, to insult your readers with a faux ‘personal’ message like this.
Jim Rickman, interim publisher, Independent Record, today:
Just in case you’ve heard some of the uninformed speculation in a few circles, I’d like to give you an update on the financial health of our parent company.
For more than 140 years, we have served the Helena community as, by far, the primary source of local news, information and advertising. To this day, we reach 79 percent of the adults in this market, with strength across all age groups in print as well as online.
We’ll match our experienced newsroom with any of our size in the country.
Rick Emanuel, publisher, Glens Falls Post Star, yesterday:
Just in case you’ve heard some of the uninformed speculation in a few circles, I’d like to give you an update on the financial health of our parent company.
For many years, we have served our community as the primary source of local news, information and advertising.
To this day, we reach more than 75 percent of the adults in this market, with strength across all age groups in print as well as online.
We’ll match our experienced newsroom with any of our size in the country.
Nathan Bekke, publisher, Casper Star Tribune, Friday:
Just in case you’ve heard some of the uninformed speculation in a few circles, I’d like to give you an update on the financial health of our parent company.
For more than 117 years, we have served Wyoming as, by far, the primary source of local news, information and advertising. To this day, we reach 80 percent of the adults in our local market, with strength across all age groups in print as well as online.
We’ll match our experienced newsroom with any of our size in the country.
I wonder who would win if they were forced to match the experienced newsrooms of Casper, Helena, and Glen Falls in a copy cage match. I really feel for the people working in newsrooms across the state, even if I occasionally disagree with some of their coverage. I admire a few of them, either as a writers or reporters. But more than anything, I pity them, for working for such a hapless collection of corporate drones, people who treat their readers and their newspapers (many with fine historical legacies) with such contempt.
Article by Don Pogreba
Don is an English/Debate teacher and debate handbook author who lives in Helena, MT, and who can't imagine living anywhere other than this glorious state. Much of his writing happens late at night and he is unlikely to respond to your comments during the day.
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Please! Won’t someone just shoot this rag and put it out of its misery. Not only is it an embarrassment to the community, but it continues to embarrass itself by assuming that its readers have an IQ two points above a plant. It now justifies its existence by comparing itself to its nonexistent competition.
I suppose this is sad, too, when you look at the coverage of Lee Newspapers BEFORE the cutbacks. It may, indeed, be a local newspaper decision but if you pick up the Gazette or Independent Record as of late you are much more likely to find hard interest stories that prop up local institutions (and advertisers) than challenge poor decision making. This blog seems to have caught them in stories like that Drug Project group but hospitals, schools and local government also seem to get a mostly free pass…
If meth dealers advertised, you’d read nothing in the Lee newspapers except how this new wonderful drug increases worker productivity and how it boosts the local economy — just like their coverage of the gambling industry. Granted, they have some good reporters working at slave wages — but the management is populated by people whose entire reason for existence is shoveling local dollars into corporate headquarters. They really don’t give a damn about the communities they’re supposed to serve.
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