It’s been nearly two weeks since the surprising announcement that two strong newspapers in strong communities in our area will close by the end of this month. The Litchfield Independent Review and the Hutchinson Leader have been in publication for nearly 150 years. Next week, April 24, will be the last printing of these venerable newspapers that have been at the core of their communities for so many generations.
No, it’s not because their communities lost interest or support. And the quality of the IR and Leader has long been among the best in Minnesota. It’s also not because no one wanted to buy them – to the best of my knowledge, the two businesses have not been offered for sale.
The IR and Leader are not alone. These two newspapers were sold to MNG (MediaNews Group) about four or five years ago. MNG is based in Denver; it is the newspaper arm of Alden Global Capital, a venture capital (also called a hedge fund, and some call them vulture capitalists) firm with a reputation for gutting its newspaper holdings that don’t make enough profit for them. Alden owns roughly 200 newspapers today, including the St. Paul Pioneer Press. This month, MNG also is closing six suburban newspapers, the Chaska Herald, Chanhassen Villager, Jordan Independent, Shakopee Valley News, Prior Lake American, and Savage Pacer. And the printing presses that print them and other publications (including our Tri-County Resource Guide) will be silenced by the end of this month as well.
This, my friends, is what greedy corporate ownership of newspapers can do, especially corporations that only see newspapers as revenue-producers.
The image comes to mind of a milk cow. You have a milk cow to produce milk, right? You eventually may have many milk cows to produce a lot of milk and, therefore, revenue. Your cows produce the revenue that pays for feed, staff, veterinary care, buildings, insurance, and equipment. Let’s say you want to “go big” and you sell to a corporation that owns hundreds or thousands of farms in multiple counties and states; you feel protected somehow by that corporate umbrella your farm is now under. But the corporation is not satisfied with the profits that served you well. No, they want 30% more. The only way to do that is to cut staff, find shortcuts with food and vet care, sell off buildings and, eventually, sell off the very cows that were making everyone money, at a loss for the tax deduction. That’s what’s happening here, and these eight newspapers are simply the milk cows for a venture capital firm that isn’t making enough money off its cows.
Something similar happened in St. Cloud with the near-demise of the Times which is still limping along with content from USA Today, and work being done everywhere but its St. Cloud office. But it is a shadow of its former self with little to no local content. In this example, corporate owner Gannett won’t let the newspaper go entirely, so someone else jumped in and started a new newspaper from scratch: St. Cloud Live under Forum Communications which owns the papers in Fargo, Willmar, Alexandria, and several more. St. Cloud Live is doing quite well, with several local reporters. At first digital-only, they now have a printed newspaper each Friday.
In Litchfield and Hutchinson, with populations of 6,600 and 14,700 respectively, and circulations (as of 2023) of more than 1,800 and 3,000 respectively, it is likely that “something else” may jump in. At this point, who knows what that could be? Several may still be out of a job, regardless.
In the meantime, Meeker County will need to find a way to publish its legals; the Litchfield paper is the only legal newspaper in Meeker County. Litchfield advertisers, schools, businesses, and organizations won’t have a way to get their messages out in a regular and timely manner. (No, Facebook is not an equal substitute; it is neither regular nor timely. And no, Facebook is not journalism; there are no journalists regularly reporting and writing for Facebook alone.)
Elections are coming up in November, and newspapers can be the most trusted and reliable source of information for voters. Uninformed voters are apathetic voters. Minnesota has among the highest voter turnouts in the country, in part because voters are informed about their choices.
So yes, the business of newspapers has changed over the years, especially in the past 10-20 years. (Few businesses have not been affected during that same timeframe.) But predictions of our demise are grossly premature. (Radio was expected to disappear with the onset of movies; movies were said to be replaced by television; and television was predicted to go away once online sources took root. And yet we have all of these still today. They’ve adapted with changing consumer habits, but they are still here and strong.)
Newspapers have had to adapt quite a bit in these past 20 years. Classified advertising has all but disappeared thanks to Craigslist and now Facebook. Our subscribers are literally dying off each week, and younger people are not signing up at the same rate. But we adapt. It’s a balancing game: -pricing subscriptions and ads at the right point so we can stay in business another year. We find new ways to provide content to our readers, and new ways to serve our communities. The days of newspapers as cash cows are long gone, but newspapers themselves are here to stay.
Newspapers write the first draft of our history, and provide an archive of that history that is easy to research. Small-town newspapers keep local governments in check; they attend the regular meetings of city councils and school boards on behalf of those who never will. Newspapers highlight the many awards, achievements, and stories of our local students, businesses, and organizations – something newspapers in bigger towns just don’t do.
We love what we do, and we take our roles very seriously.
At the same time, we all must be better news consumers: read more than a headline, late-night comedy shows should not be a primary news source, subscribe to (as in pay for) local news to keep it alive, understand the difference between news and an editorial stance, and the difference between journalist-produced news and news “scrapers” (stealing news created by others to put on their own website), and learn to recognize propaganda generated by political parties, special interest groups, corporations, and foreign countries. Thank you for reading!