I’m sure many of you have stories to tell about the mega snowstorm yesterday. Here is mine. Monday morning, after we finished that day’s issue, when it was clear we were going to get hit hard by the storm, I got together with my department heads. I knew it would be impossible to deliver the paper on Tuesday, so we came up with a plan to get the Tuesday paper out late Monday. We had hoped and tried to start the distribution late afternoon. It went out early evening, but we got it out, and our distributors delivered it long before the storm hit.
Tuesday we had two publications to print, one was a commercial print job and the other was MIAH (Making It At Home), our weekly newspaper distributed in Wells, Ogunquit and Moody. The commercial job would be picked up the following day and MIAH would be mailed out then, but we needed it printed and an insert was scheduled for MIAH so we needed three to four people to work the inserting machine. However, no one in that department showed up for work. I wasn’t surprised but we needed to get the work done. My two pressmen, Walter Newbert and Ron Therrien (a trainee) both came in and printed the publications. Walt picked up his son Birch who does various work for us and brought him in and my Circulation Manager Bob Welch came in from Sanford. That’s four out of forty people on staff scheduled to work in the building that day. Bob and Birch were both familiar with the inserting machine and with Walter’s expertise adjusting it at times between running the press and working with Ron, it got done. Oh yeah, and I helped, as the lady on the Shake n’ Bake commercials used to say. As a young man I worked in factories and thus, am familiar with assembly lines, machinery and factory settings in general. Bob showed me what to do so we had a third person working steadily on the insert machine and we got the job done. I haven’t worked in a setting like that in thirty-five years. It was great! We worked hard and fast, told stories and laughed. I thoroughly enjoyed working side by side with my staff while we watched the snow outside pile higher and higher by the hour. It was a blast.
Newspaper Industry Update
As we all know the newspaper industry as a whole has been struggling more and more each year. Fewer people read the newspaper each day than did 15 to 20 years ago. Lots of big companies, particularly those in competitive industries like radio and television love to use the newspaper struggle in an effort to try to boost their own bottom lines and hide the fact that they are struggling significantly as well. The problem isn’t the medium, i.e., newspapers. The problem is that far fewer people seem to be reading real news stories as opposed to entertainment stories. There are two reasons for this. One is that some are less interested than folks from previous generations. The other is that working families have far less time today to focus on such mundane tasks as reading the local daily newspaper every day like generations before had, to keep informed about the goings on of industry and government and the every present danger of collusion between the two. Instead the watch television, fiddle on Facebook and in general go online for various things.
The founders of our nation, those who wrote our founding documents like the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution, knew that some folks in society with nefarious agendas would inevitably rise to power, as despots frequently do with their insatiable desire for it. So our founders created a necessary defense system against those with wicked intentions. Along with the Constitution, that the people had against corruption and collusion from these interests was a free press that would keep the people informed so they could use their votes to protect themselves.
Because of this unique circumstance and I mean that literally, the newspaper industry is not just another one that is hurting. In history, when technologies displace industries like the automobile displaced the horse and buggy industry, it is very hard for the displaced but the country goes on and usually better than it had before. But no free society has ever existed without a free press, and that is because it can’t. And newspapers are the only news medium that are still doing the investigative journalism required by the concept of a free press. Neither radio, television nor the Internet (other than the content that newspapers put on their websites) produce this profoundly important, absolutely required service to our country. It is like having a structure with a foundation that is in trouble. If that foundation crumbles, the entire building follows. So whatever problems the newspaper industry is having, whatever threat to its interests, it is the same threat to our national interests. Newspapers may not be everything we always wanted them to be or even everything they used to be, but they are still the best defense against corruption and collusion by powerful interests in the government and private industry. Use this defense to protect your interests. I’ve instructed our circulation manager to offer significant discounts for home delivery. Give us a call and someone will be happy to help you.
Thanks for reading, please read every day and have a wicked great week!
Please feel free to comment on my musings with a Letter to the Editor by emailing jtcommunity@journaltribune.com or mail a note to Journal Tribune, Attn: Editor, 457 Alfred St., Biddeford, ME 04005.
Bruce M. Hardina is the publisher of the Journal Tribune, a singer song-writer, a philosopher, a student of life and the human experience, a columnist, a loving neighbor, friend, father, son and brother.
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