How many times have you heard someone say: “Write that down.”? The reference may be to an item on a shopping list, game score, inventive idea, child’s funny comment or tales of your grandfather’s childhood. Physical, written record remains powerful and we must not let go of our community’s chronicles.
Therefore, it is concerning that 11 Manitoba newspapers are no longer keeping record. Some are closed permanently, as of this past week, while others in southwestern Manitoba were put on ice for 12 weeks at the start of April. Parent corporate companies explain this as a dollars decision.
In balance, however, nearly 36 community newspapers, including this one, continue to publish local, through the COVID-19 crisis. Gordon Brewerton, Senior Vice-President of Prairie Newspaper Group, Glacier Media, stated recently, “When we made the decision to temporarily suspend publication of the four Corner Pocket papers, we made a decision to keep Virden open.” He went on to express confidence in the future of the Virden publication.
Although our four sister papers, the Reston Recorder, Deloraine Times & Star, Souris Plaindealer and Melita New Era were struggling to be profitable, COVID-19 was too high a mountain and we are sad about that.
The Manitoba Community Newspaper Association (MCNA) was informed early this week that Post Media will permanently close seven member titles immediately: Altona Red River Valley Echo, Carman Valley Leader, Interlake Spectator (Gimli), Morden Times, Selkirk Journal, Stonewall Argus & Teulon Times and Winkler Times.
“It is a very sad day for us all, as well as the staff of those papers and the communities involved,” said the correspondent from MCNA.
President of the MCNA, publisher Ken Waddell of Neepawa stressed, in a phone interview, the value of the indelible record of printed news. “In order to have a newspaper you have to have news and you have to paper, and people will say, ‘why paper?’ Because once it’s in print… you can't take it back.”
He pointed out that electronically filed stories are easily updated or even removed with a click of the mouse. The accountability tied to printed news is important. “You can't erase it… or delete the tweet. On that basis, the core strength of a newspaper is that it's a permanent record.”
Waddell said that a local paper rides out and reflects the economic ups and downs, alongside the people and businesses it serves.
Melita New Era website carries the announcement of its 12-week closure and hope for a return: “We look forward to returning to our place of informing and connecting our communities as soon as we are able.”
The notice acknowledges that the businesses who normally advertise are under pressure with COVID-19 closures. It states, “Advertising makes up the vast majority of the revenue that pays the wages of our journalists and other staff as well as the costs of producing and distributing a newspaper, either in print or online.”
Recently, and for the first time in history for the Empire-Advance, there’s been an invitation to donate through a link on our website. Other papers are doing it, some very big papers. A donation is a completely voluntary decision and I suspect that a subscription (online or print) makes more sense to some people.
Our publisher Gord Brewerton stated in the North Battleford paper, “We cannot rely solely on our advertisers anymore, nor can we sustain these losses.”
At the Empire-Advance, we are down to three part-time staff, but as Brewerton put it, “Yet we continue to work harder than ever to keep delivering readers the information they need about the community…”
We do, because our communities are fascinating, alive, with things to say to each other and to the world.
We have recently looked back into 135 years of news records, and brought some of those stories back. The Empire-Advance records time and place - a reflection of achievements and struggles.
