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A few days at Thumper Pond for a very presidential retreat

By Chuck Hunt - Editor | Jun 25, 2023

This week I am headed up to northern Minnesota for a few days at a resort called Thumper Pond.

I know, it sounds like a vacation, and well, in some ways it is.

Except that it is a newspaper association conference – of sorts. The board of directors of the Minnesota Newspaper Association will meet for their quarterly meeting, and the Past Presidents of the Minnesota Newspaper Association will have their annual meeting.

That is correct. All of the past presidents of the Minnesota Newspaper Association are automatically members of this distinguished group called the MNA Past Presidents.

There will be 21 of the past presidents of the newspaper association in attendance at this meeting. That is not all of them, as several have other obligations and cannot attend.

I am not sure if any other associations or groups revere their past presidents like the Minnesota Newspaper Association does.

At their meeting, the past presidents will discuss a variety of issues mainly dealing with the newspaper industry. Some of the past presidents are retired, others are still actively working as owners, publishers, editors, etc., of newspapers across the state of Minnesota.

Some are small town publishers, others are at daily newspapers, some are independent owners and some work for large chains of newspapers.

(I fit into several categories, as a publisher of small town newspapers back in 1998 when I was president, and now as the editor at a newspaper that is part of a newspaper chain for the past 15 years.)

There are no elections at our meeting, because the most immediate past president of the newspaper association board is automatically the new president of the past presidents group.

Ironically, that means that the only person at this meeting who has never been at this meeting before is the one who has to run the meeting as the new president of the past presidents.

There is a secretary and a treasurer of the group. It seems these officers serve in those positions until they get too old or die. I am the secretary of the group and have held that position for years ever since the previous one died many years ago.

The newspaper association board of directors will meet at the same time that the past presidents are meeting. At the end of both meetings the two groups will meet together.

The current board will tell the past presidents all about the association, and the board could ask for their advice on some matters.

One topic that will come up either during the meetings or before or after them will be the serious issues facing newspapers around Minnesota these days.

Not all newspapers are struggling, of course, but many are. It is often a difficult business, because of many different factors. Some are increased costs such as postage and printing, the two biggest expenses for many newspapers. That plus declining revenue in many cases causes concerns.

Then there is that competition with social media thing, particularly Facebook.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is working in the U.S. Senate on bipartisan legislation to save local journalism and allow newspapers to jointly negotiate fair compensation for access to their content by Google, Facebook and other dominant platforms.

But perhaps the biggest obstacle for small town newspapers is the small town itself. In so many cases, the small town just ain’t what it used to be.

Gone are the days of two grocery stores, drug stores, five and dimes, car dealerships, clothing stores and furniture stores in every little town.

Another Minnesota newspaper ceased publication earlier this month, in a little town called Balaton. Some say they were not surprised, as keeping a newspaper going in a town with a population of around 500 and which has only a few businesses is a difficult chore, and is usually done out of a love of local journalism and not a hope of big profits.

I remember the story well. An old guy had run the Balaton Press-Tribune for many years and wanted to retire. A young, local couple, Steve and Kathy Swift, bought it in 1985, the same year we bought the neighboring Tyler Tribute.

They wanted Balaton to keep having a newspaper, and they kept it going until 1996, when they felt they couldn’t do it any longer and sold it to the Tracy Headlight Herald newspaper.

The owners of the Tracy newspaper eventually wanted to quit publishing it and another local Balaton person bought it and has tried to keep it going for the past few years, just so the town could keep its own newspaper.

On June 1, he gave up and shut it down with a lot of regret. By some calculations it was the 121st newspaper in Minnesota to cease publication in the past 20 years, although some of those were “melded” into a neighboring publication.

That is what I had to do one time with the Buffalo Ridge Gazette in Ruthton, Minnesota, population now at just 221. I had taken over the newspaper at the request of the paper’s owner, a banker and the mayor, and I promised the townspeople I would continue to publish it as long as it did not cost me any money – even if it just broke even.

When it ceased to even break even we combined it inside the Tyler Tribute. Still, the Gazette is also on the list of closed newspapers in the state.

So what is the future of rural, small town Minnesota newspapers? I wish I knew. But, perhaps I will learn more at this summer’s Minnesota Newspaper Association gathering.