Monday, March 16, 2009

Small Town News Getting Smaller

As my 11.4 regular readers know, I have a castle in the northern regions (actually it's more of a trailer in central Wisconsin). I try to keep up with the news that would affect me and my wife, as well as my neighbors and friends that I have made up there. I do this by regularly checking the website of one of the local TV stations, as well as subscribing to the Iola Herald and the Waupaca County Post.

At the beginning of the last year, I lamented what I saw to be the beginning of the end when Journal Communications, Inc. bought out the Herald. A little later that year, JCI also bought out the Waupaca Post. They also bought out all of the other little town papers, as well as the local community advertising paper.

Over the last few months, they started giving us a peak at what they had in store. I noticed that the same stories started appearing in each of the papers. However, at the time, there was still enough of a difference to keep both subscriptions.

Then, two weeks ago, they really started to make the changes more prominent. The Herald and the Post became virtually identical. Both papers went from tabloid size to regular newspaper size. All of the stories in each paper were identical, as were the layouts and the classifieds. Each paper covered exactly one page for each of the small towns and cities on the western side of the county.

In fact, the only two discernible differences were the banners and the insert flyers. The Post continued to carry the inserts for local stores, which were mostly furniture ads. The Herald continued with ads from the local IGA. (For the uninitiated, IGA is a grocery store chain.)

Even though this means a loss of the local news that I've grown to enjoy and sometimes be amused by, I guess I should be thankful for one thing. Since they have become identical in most of the meaningful ways, I decided to call today and cancel the subscription to the Post. I had the remaining balance transferred to the Herald, giving me one more year (worth $40, according to them).

One of the good things about JCI taking over is that they are now developing a website. They call it, in true JCI fashion, WaupacaNOW.com. The site is still incomplete and there are many missing pages that they haven't built yet, but overall, it looks like it could be OK. If they build it up enough, I could save myself another $40 per year.

They do, however, need to work on some of their editing:


I am sure that Ms. Garbe is very proud to have her name and picture in the local paper for her feat, but the title leaves a lot to be desired, doesn't it?

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