Indy Digest: Oct. 16, 2023
I was at a journalism conference recently where the topic of saving blighted or diminished newspapers came up. One of the big questions was: Do you retain the newspaper’s identity and brand? Or do you take the newspaper’s assets—subscription bases, racks, etc.—and start over with a new identity and brand?
There was not agreement in the room. I, personally, think it has a lot to do with the newspaper in question. When we took over our now-sister newspaper, the Reno News & Review, not quite two years ago, keeping the brand/identity was a no-brainer, because the paper was a widely (albeit not universally) beloved entity.
But if someone, say, takes over The Desert Sun in five years, after another five years of corporate neglect … what would be the correct decision then?
ProPublica published a thought-provoking article that covers overlapping ground over the weekend. The headline was “Local Newspapers Are Vanishing. How Should We Remember Them?” The subheadline: “As smaller newspapers shrink or disappear, it’s easy to romanticize the role they played. But one reporter’s memories of the heyday of local journalism reveal a much more complicated reality.”
To summarize and oversimplify the point of the piece: While the diminishment of local newspapers is definitely, unquestionably a bad thing, it’s important to remember that some local newspapers did crappy things. An excerpt:
It’s no secret that local news is in an advanced state of decline. Since 1990, the number of newspaper employees in the U.S. has plunged from 455,000 to fewer than 90,000, even as the population has increased by a third. Repeated humiliations—most recently, a police raid on a Kansas weekly and the home of its publisher—underscore the reduced clout of newspapers.
Springfield, Massachusetts, exemplifies this trend. When I worked there from 1978 to 1981, it had two newspapers, the Daily News and the Morning Union, with a combined circulation of 150,000. They have since merged into one paper, now called The Republican, which has an average daily print circulation of 14,560. The Daily News alone employed 85 reporters, editors and photographers, about four times as many journalists as The Republican has today.
The author, Daniel Golden, then goes on to talk about ways in which the Springfield Morning News “didn’t always fulfill its watchdog role. Like a doting parent, it lavished attention on its community, but sometimes with a paternalism that chose to conceal problems in the service of what it thought was a broader good.”
Golden shares an anecdote from former Springfield Daily News reporter Mark Marchand:
Marchand, who covered the middle-class suburb of Agawam for the Daily News, learned that some airplane hobbyists were upset that tiny Bowles Airport, where they flew their two- and four-seat propeller planes, was about to close to make room for an industrial park. Marchand talked to them and filed a story reflecting their concern that they wouldn’t be able to find hangar space nearby.
That afternoon, Marchand recalled, he was surprised to learn that Richard Garvey, the Daily News’ top editor, was looking at his draft. It wasn’t the kind of big scoop that Garvey normally reviewed before publication. But, without talking to Marchand, he rewrote it. “Developer Ready to Invest in Bowles Airport” ran the next day, under Marchand’s byline, touting the industrial park plan. It didn’t quote a single airplane owner.
Eek.
Eleven days ago, while discussing National Newspaper Week, I wrote in this space: “When I hear the word ‘newspaper,’ I think of entities that work to inform the public, to be a part of their communities, to—as the old phrase goes—afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”
Unfortunately, in the case discussed by Marchand, the Springfield Daily News was comforting the comfortable, and afflicting the afflicted—and failing its community as a result.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
A Cautionary Tale: The Bent’s Second Season Opens With the Wonderful ‘Gross Indecency’
By Bonnie Gilgallon
October 15th, 2023
The Bent, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, tells the tale of the Oscar Wilde’s 1890s trials for homosexuality in the first production of the company’s second season.
CV History: ‘Auntie’ Pearl McCallum McManus Was Instrumental in Creating the Village of Palm Springs
By Greg Niemann
October 13th, 2023
While Nellie Coffman of the Desert Inn was enjoying widespread fame as the “founding matriarch” of modern Palm Springs, Pearl McCallum was in the process of resurrecting the neglected family estate. She succeeded—and thrived.
She’s Fearless: ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ Stands Among the Best Concert Films Ever Made
By Bob Grimm
October 16th, 2023
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is a nearly three-hour extravaganza showcasing a spectacular artist achieving amazing heights.
More News
• There will soon be a new minimum wage for health-care workers in the state. Our partners at Calmatters report: “Gov. Gavin Newsom … signed a law that will raise the pay for hundreds of thousands of California health care workers and set them on a path to a $25 minimum wage. Newsom’s signing of the law means medical technicians, nursing assistants, custodians and other support staff will see a gradual wage hike that rolls out starting next year. He got behind the law on the same day that unions representing lower-paid Kaiser Permanente employees announced a new contract with a $25 minimum wage for the health care giant’s California workers. … Newsom’s approval of the new minimum wage for medical workers follows his signature on a separate law mandating a new pay floor for fast-food workers. Starting next April, fast food employees will make at least $20 an hour.”
• Meanwhile, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have helped out families with children who need hearing aids … and those families, as you’d expect, are ticked off. Also from Calmatters: “Two of Johanna Wonderly’s four children depend on hearing aids, and the other two will probably need them in the future. At roughly $6,000 per child, the cost adds up quickly. But the Roseville family can only afford them when Wonderly’s husband, Paul, is called to active duty for the California Army National Guard, because that’s when federal coverage kicks in. The family’s standard insurance does not cover hearing aids. … The Legislature this year unanimously passed a measure that would have helped families like hers by requiring health insurers to cover hearing aids for anyone under 21. Most private health insurance in California designates children’s hearing aids as cosmetic or elective devices. But over the weekend Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, citing improvements made to an existing state program established in 2021 to help families afford hearing aids.” (Wonderly’s family makes too much money, according to the state, to qualify for that aforementioned “existing state program.”)
• Pharmacy chain Rite-Aid has filed for bankruptcy—in part because of multiple lawsuits claiming the chain fueled the opioid crisis by knowingly filling at-best questionable prescriptions—and will be closing more stores. CNN explains why these closures and other chain-pharmacy cutbacks are a problem: “Drugstore chains for decades saturated U.S. cities, suburbs and small towns with new stores. Now, they are closing thousands of stores, leaving gaps in communities for medicines and essentials. Researchers find pharmacy closures lead to health risks such as older adults failing to take medication. … CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid are eliminating some locations as they face rising competition for these items from Amazon, big-box stores with pharmacies like Walmart, and Dollar General in rural areas. Although drugstores benefited during the pandemic from people getting COVID-19 vaccines, fewer consumers visited stores to shop and prescription volumes fell because people were getting fewer elective procedures. ‘The pandemic was not a strong time for drugstores,’ said David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.”
• Tangentially related: A shortage of ADHD medication Adderall is persisting, and some members of Congress want to know why. The Hill says: “A group of House Democrats is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to explain what the agency is doing to address the shortage of Adderall in the U.S. that was declared exactly one year ago. Led by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Va.), Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter stating their ‘continued concern’ over the ongoing shortage of mixed amphetamine salts, better known as Adderall. … Last year, Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest supplier of Adderall in the U.S., cited ongoing supply disruptions and issues at one of its manufacturing facilities for the shortage. Though this issue has since been resolved, federal regulators recently said the U.S. is still feeling the impact of this disruption and that ‘record-high prescription rates’ of stimulant products are worsening the problem. In their letter, the congress members cited recent survey data from the National Community Pharmacists Association that indicated 94 percent of independent community pharmacies are reporting shortages of Adderall or generics.”
• A history professor, writing for The Conversation, finds disturbing parallels between what happened after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the threats Israel is making following the awful attacks by Hamas: “As Israel pursues its response to the Hamas attack, the Israeli government would be well advised to remember the past two decades of often indecisive warfare conducted by both the United States and Israel against insurgent and terrorist groups. The invasion of Afghanistan ultimately failed because U.S. policymakers did not think through the end state of the campaign as they exacted revenge for the 9/11 attacks. An Israeli invasion of Gaza could well lead to an indecisive quagmire if the political goal is not considered ahead of time.”
• And finally … you probably heard that Suzanne Somers died yesterday at her Palm Springs home yesterday due to breast cancer; today would have been her 77th birthday. You may not know she was a trailblazer, of sorts, in fighting for equal pay in Hollywood. The New York Times explains: “By the show’s fifth season, ‘Three’s Company’ was one of the nation’s most popular sitcoms. Ms. Somers’ acrimonious contract negotiations with ABC became news in 1982 when she asked for a raise, to $50,000 from $30,000 an episode. In recent years, Ms. Somers repeatedly said that she had sought $150,000, in line with Mr. Ritter’s pay (the equivalent of about $490,000 today). She did not get the pay increase. Instead, she was fired. ‘I’ve been playing what I think is one of the best dumb blondes that’s ever been done, but I never got any credit,’ she told The Times that year. ‘I did it so well that everyone thought I really was a dumb blonde.’”
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