It’s amusing to attend your own funeral

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Like Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s classic, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” I am amused at attending my funeral. This is getting old, as the funeral of the hometown newspaper keeps getting played repeatedly like the movie “Groundhog Day.”

I remember well the first announcement I heard concerning the newspaper’s demise. In the late ‘90s, I was attending our yearly Missouri Advertising Managers Association (MAMA) meeting in Branson. Our young speaker — who thought he knew it all — predicted that newspapers would be history in five short years.

Since then, I’ve read story after story in the national news with an obituary of the weekly newspaper.

Next Sunday, CBS’s news program “60 Minutes” is scheduled to run a story entitled “The fading future of local newspapers.”

A teaser of the story talks about how hedge funds and other financial firms — which have been taking over newspapers for the past 30 years — have destroyed many newsrooms for the almighty dollar.

During my junior year in college, I interned at the Monroe City News in Monroe City, Mo. Just west of Hannibal on Hwy. 36, Monroe City is a town similar to our local communities.

The newspaper was owned by family friends Michael and Barb Sell. When American Publishing approached the Sells to sell in 1989 the price was too good to pass up.

By 2000 The Monroe City News was closed.

That was the beginning. Since the turn of the century, big corporations with names like Lakeway Publishers (not to be confused with Lakeside Books), American Publishing, GateHouse and Gannett gobbled up small weekly and daily publications.

Like all good small-town weeklies, our three publications rely on local content. We report on school boards, city and county government, and local sports. This is news not found anywhere else.

When a corporation from out-of-state takes over a newspaper, they usually switch their focus from content to the bottom line. To that end, they cut staff and raise prices until they run themselves out of business.

GateHouse Media purchased the Columbia Tribune in 2016. By 2018 they had reduced their reporters down to a staff of one. We employ five full-time reporters, plus four other writers, between our three publications.

Another example of this, in our area, is the Rolla Daily News, the St. James Leader and the Waynesville Daily Guide, also formerly owned by GateHouse. All three, at one time, were profitable publications. The Daily Guide was closed in 2018. The Leader and the Daily News were so poorly run they attracted competition from other local publishers.

The St. James Leader closed in 2016. After GateHouse merged with Gannett last year, Salem Publishing took over the Rolla Daily News, which publishes the Phelps County Focus (the competition for the Daily News).

Now the tables have turned. Instead of gobbling up newspapers, these companies are selling — what were once profitable newspapers — at bargain prices. Many of these sales are going back to local ownership.

The story is this: the business model deployed by big media groups does not work.

The list of newspapers in Mid-Missouri that are locally owned include the Sullivan Independent News, the New Haven Independent News, the Washington Missourian, the Cuba Free Press, the St. James Free Press, the Steelville Star, the Houston Herald, the Rolla Focus, the Dixon Star, the Montgomery Standard, the Warren County Record, the Mexico Ledger, the Eldon Advertiser, the Hermitage Index, the Lake Sun-Leader and the Tipton Times, plus our three publications.

Three of these publications, including the Advocate, are relatively new startups. And, they are not the only new newspapers in Missouri.

Make no mistake. The golden days of newspapers are behind us. But, broadcast TV and radio are in the same boat.

A study in 2019 by Strategy Analytics found that radio usage in automobiles is in “fast decline.” Pew’s associate director of journalism research, Katerina Eva Matsa, reported in 2018 “Americans are relying less on television for their news. Just 50 percent of U.S. adults now get news regularly from television, down from 57 percent a year prior.”