First on the agenda, I’m going to address some of the emails and comments I’ve received about the paper in the last couple of weeks. Number one: I don’t own any part of The Extra, nor did I when it was the “FM Extra.” Number two: I am not the editor of The Extra. As many of you very faithful readers and advertisers may (or may not) already know, The Extra, aka The FM Extra, was sold last December to a corporate conglomerate called New Century Press. New Century Press owns several newspapers and feature papers, much like The Extra, in at least three other states and many more towns and cities throughout the Midwest. The corporate office is in Iowa. And Iowa is where The Extra is all “put together.” I am just a lowly independent freelance writer who writes my weekly column, sends it to the proofer in Iowa (who, by the way, does a superb job of cleaning up my spelling and punctuation gaffs), and from there the layout of my column is designed and, well, “laid out” before it goes to press. Number three: Gerry Gilmour is presently the District Manager for New Century Press. In his first or second editorial, I believe he asked “How do you like the ‘cleaned-up’ look of The Extra?” If you like it or if you don’t like it, let Mr. Gilmour know what you think. Why not? He did ask, right? Receiving input and ideas from our readers is the best way to gauge how well we are providing what readers and advertisers want.
If you have a suggestion, a complaint, a question, something you would like to see in The Extra, or another writer you would like to read, or whatever, you can always send an email to Gerry Gilmour at: fmextra@ncppub.com or to me at: sooasheim@aol.com, or to Lisa Miller, the general manager in the corporate Iowa office at: lmiller@ncppub.com. If you send it to me, I’ll send it onward to Mr. Gilmour and to Lisa Miller in Iowa. That way, the office in Iowa and the folks in our office here in Moorhead can confer and determine how to respond. The Extra has always worked as a team in the past and that is still the method it hopes to continue to work.
Yes, like everything else in our ever-growing world of “corporate America,” in order for The Extra to grow to the next level, deeper pockets were inevitable. Print media on any level is a gamble. Competing with the internet, social media networks, business networks, and on and on, has definitely taken its toll on daily newspapers and all types of print media across not only our country, but the entire world. The important thing to remember is that print media are still viable and offer very necessary tools for businesses, especially small and/or independently owned businesses, to afford advertising. The internet is getting more and more competitive, which plays into the theory of ‘supply and demand.’ There’s only so much room on an internet web page that can be used for that ‘glanced over’ net user to pay attention to an ad. Not so with print media. More pages can always be printed if and when necessary. The other aspect about newspapers versus the net is that it is absolutely vital for an open and free society to remain a free and open society. The government can shut down an internet site in an instant, or for that matter, the entire caboodle if it decides it wants to. But try and stop a newspaper from printing and see what happens? That’s also a reason ham radios are still a very important method of communicating, even though fewer and fewer people are using them — even as a hobby. Personally, I wish everyone could have access to a ham radio. There are still areas where people live in far more isolated conditions than the majority of us have ever seen or traveled to. Alaska, for example, is one. The Territorial U.S. is another. I have a friend who lives in the Philippines who owns and operates a charter fishing cruiser. She has one ham radio in her boat and another in her house (and yes, I did say ‘SHE’). But I digress. My point about newspapers and print media is this: people can say anything they want in an email, a blog, on social network sites, by tweets and even on talk radio or God knows whatever else is out there, without so much as a whit of being responsible for what they say or rumors they start or just crap they make up for the pure delight of doing it. Printed media cannot do that without taking a huge risk of being sued. Print media last because they can be saved to come back and make the person or persons who made whatever accusation or bogus statement responsible. It’s hard to deny when it’s in black and white and available for everyone to see and read.
The downside to print media is when the almighty dollar is more important than the product being produced – when journalists and writers are hand-tied and aren’t allowed to report or write their stories from both sides of an issue with all the facts.
In fairness, T.V. news reporting isn’t given enough credit for the fair reporting they do more often than not, especially in the Red River Valley. The main problem with T.V. news is that there simply isn’t enough time beyond a two- to three-minute segment for each piece they try to report on. Again, T.V. newscasters, too, are held to a very high standard because tapes are made of each newscast, and unless you haven’t heard, just about everyone in the universe has some sort of taping gizmo for their television programs today. Don’t confuse actual news reporting with opinion reporting, such as on the cable stations. That’s political, and an entirely different sport altogether.
The Extra is doing some different things with the layout and adding new columnists, and right now it is going through changes. Some changes some folks will agree with and some they will not. The best way to get what you want, as a reader or as an advertiser, is to voice your preferences. Send an email to one of the above-listed email addresses and express your feelings. The whole point is to give everyone an option to read more and to offer small and large businesses, too, an opportunity to advertise at a reasonable cost in a medium that is available to everyone who wants it. No one should be locked out of learning what is happening within their local home turf just because they cannot afford to buy a newspaper every day or a subscription every month. Nor should any business, small or large, have to pay whatever the going rate is when there is only one “game” in town. Weekly papers are an option for all businesses to get their names and products out to the public so that the public – that would be YOU and ME – have more choices. That requires participation from you to pick it up, read it, talk about it, put an ad in when you need to, or write a letter or an email complimenting or complaining or giving a suggestion. Keep in mind: nothing is ever accomplished with apathy.
And thus ends Soo’s Sermon on the Benefits of Print Media for this week.
HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY MICHAEL RICHARD! We wish you were home to blow out ALL those candles!
For questions, comments and responses to Soo email: sooasheim@aol.com