HOT PURSUIT
A front-page story in the Star Tribune last month caught my eye in a big way. The headline: “In St. Cloud, readers live with ‘ghost paper.’”
The story highlighted how a corporate newspaper chain—Gannett in this case— has gutted what once was a thriving newspaper in St. Cloud, a community of around 70,000. The St. Cloud Times is among the nearly 250 daily papers owned by Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper company.
The newsroom has been slashed from 50 people in its prime to get this—two people. Yes, you’ve read that right. There are now two people remaining in the newsroom for a newspaper that covers a region of 200,000 people.
To put this in perspective, the Steele County Times covers a county of 35,000 people and offers a newsroom of four full-time writers/editors plus a couple additional freelance writers. It blows me away that we feature a newsroom double the size of what St. Cloud has fallen to in recent weeks.
This, of course, should not come as any big surprise to readers of our newspaper as I have been writing about this topic several times over the past year or more. Sadly, large corporations seem to be in the business of killing local journalism.
The saddest reality of what’s happening with many larger newspapers boils down to something that could impact everyone.
“This would be a great time to be involved in political corruption, because there’s nobody watching,” Dale Zacher, chair of the Department of Mass Communications at St. Cloud State University, told the Star Tribune.
In St. Cloud, nobody is covering the city council, the school board, the events that are taking place.
And research has shown that we can’t have a democracy without an informed electorate.
Penelope Muse Abernathy of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has coined the phrase “ghost paper” to describe a newspaper that’s still operating but has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. She said the St. Cloud paper qualifies for the description.
Without naming any papers, I believe there are others around the state that also qualify to be “ghost papers.”
I’m encouraged by what’s happening in this region. Our newspaper has grown significantly over the past two years. And my fellow publisher, Eli Lutgens, who operates the Star Eagle in New Richland, opened a newspaper in Waseca about six months ago. Lutgens’ new paper now has more readers than the existing newspaper owned by, you’ve guessed it, a large corporation.
I believe what Lutgens and I have accomplished with our newspapers proves that people still want local news, and they are willing to support it.
The most important takeaway for anyone should be this: Community journalism will only survive if the public supports it through subscriptions and advertising.
And I’ll throw one other thing out there. Large corporations need to stop being greedy and dismantling newspapers that serve the better interest of society.
As the year comes to a close, I’m thankful and blessed for the many readers who want us to go in hot pursuit of producing a quality newspaper that they can take a lot of pride in.