As you can tell from a story and an ad elsewhere in this issue of the Faribault County Register, and from my column last week, I attended the 159th Minnesota Newspaper Association Annual Convention. It was not my first time. In fact, I believe I have only missed one in the last 40 years or more, and that was because I had COVID.

I go because, yes, the staffs of the newspapers I have been at have won awards nearly every year. And don’t get me wrong, being recognized by your peers in the newspaper business is always nice. But that is not the main reason I go.

I go to continue to learn about newspapers. I do that by visiting with fellow newspaper people and by going to sessions.

This year there were 17 different sessions, most 1 ½ hours long. Plus there were two luncheons with speakers, two dinners (one where you received your awards) and an annual meeting of the association.

All in two days.

The sessions run concurrently. There were five Thursday morning, four each on Thursday afternoon, Friday morning and Friday afternoon.

The topics are wide ranging and some are meant for ad people, some for reporters, others for editors and publishers. There is using AI to boost ad sales, creating better images, copyright laws, AP style, covering elections, legal updates and a whole lot more.

I was a panelist at one of the sessions called “Buying and Selling Newspapers,” since I have bought and sold a few of them over my years in the business, and had, in fact, just sold three newspapers in southwest Minnesota on Jan. 1 of this year.

I sold those three newspapers, not to a chain, but to a neighboring publisher of a single newspaper. There were five panelists, all who had either just sold, or just bought, a newspaper. All the stories were different.

One was the new owner of the Henderson Independent, one of the oldest continuing newspapers in the state, under the same name.

She worked at the newspaper and the owner said he was thinking of closing the paper. So she bought it from him, just to keep a newspaper going for the community. And, she has received a lot of community support.

The next session I attended was called simply “Hot Topics” and anyone there could bring up a hot topic and then others would talk about how they had handled that same kind of situation. It was surprising how many newspapers are facing similar issues.

That was the theme of another session, which was titled “I have to live in this town, too” which dealt with handling difficult stories. Those were mainly stories that had to do with local crime, accidents, or community issues that have two sides.

There are things that are difficult to write stories about, especially in a small town where you know everyone – and they know you.

I learned long ago that no matter what you do, you won’t please everyone. Being an editor is like being a mayor, or school superintendent or city administrator. Not everyone is going to like you or the decisions you make.

One thing that was brought up was that in the olden days people who were upset would come in and talk to the editor, superintendent or administrator in person. Now they vent their being upset on Facebook, and that is difficult to respond to.

Which brings me to the fourth session I attended which was called “Legal Update” where the MNA attorney, Mark Anfinson, tells what is new in the newspaper legal world. That usually covers libel cases, lawsuits, open meeting law violations and more.

Our speakers at the lunches included U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Governor Tim Walz and Secretary of State Steve Simon. I know my Republican friends are going to note that all three are Democrats and how come we didn’t have any Republican speakers. The answer is, we have had Republicans when they were governors or senators. We even had an Independent when Jesse Ventura was governor, and that was the year I was the MNA president and introduced him to an audience full of newspaper people.

Now that was an interesting night.

It was January 1999 and Ventura had just been elected governor a few months earlier, in November 1998. He spoke to the largest crowd we ever had at an MNA convention – about 800 newspaper people.

He was dressed in a jogging suit and his speech was one that, well, was very memorable.

But back to the fact that the Register won five awards at the convention. It is quite an honor and we are very appreciative. There were over 4,000 entries in the Better Newspaper Contest this year, so winning any award is pretty nice. The contest is judged by newspaper people from a different state each year so that makes it special as well. And a lot of credit goes to our terrific, hard working staff here at the Register.

The Register has won awards every year for many years. But, as I have said in the past, we don’t do what we do in order to win awards. We do it because we want to publish a great community newspaper that serves the Faribault County area. To do that, we need the support of the community, or any awards will mean little.

So, thanks to all of you – advertisers, subscribers and readers – for your support. We will try and do our best to give you as good a community newspaper as we can.

Our best award is someone saying, “Hey, I really enjoyed reading the Register this week.”

Thanks for reading us.