Back in November of 1999, I applied and was hired to be the principal reporter and editor of the Chicopee Herald. The Buendo Brothers, then owner of Reminder Publications, had bought the Herald in 1998 and there was a job opening when the initial editor left.
I was happy to be back in local journalism and made some changes that I thought would improve the paper. I subsequently wrote a column about who I was, what I wanted to do, etc.
I had written columns as part of the duties at The Westfield News many years previous and enjoyed it, so I thought why not do one every week.
I wanted to establish an editorial page that provided a forum for interactions with readers. I wanted to see letters to the editor and understood a column is one way of encouraging that activity.
Now after five years as a radio talk show host on WREB in Holyoke — I was the house liberal, Ron Chimelis was the conservative and the late Jonathan Evens was someplace in-between — I knew that anything I wrote in a column was fair game for people to comment, especially from people who disagreed with me.
By the way, I received some very creative hate mail during my WREB time and quickly realized there were people who listened daily just to get mad at me. This loving-to-hate someone is a big part of the talk radio experience. My mom couldn’t stand Tracy Cole, the legendary misogynist but listened to him daily.
Being a newspaper editor did not shield me from a new group of folks who disagreed with me. For many people who called themselves “conservative,” I was nothing more or less than a “communist.” It didn’t matter what I wrote — to them I was the enemy.
I should note there was plenty of people who agreed with me and enjoyed my rants. I will be very grateful to them until I do the dirt nap.
The culmination of this “he’s a communist” argument came when a friend of one of the Buendos demanded that he be given a chance to read my rants before publication so he could provide a counter viewpoint. The brothers took me to lunch and thought a trip to the Big Mamou would soften me up to the notion.
I told them “No,” and mentally prepared myself to be fired. Amazingly I wasn’t and the gentleman in question backed off.
I am sure that many people like him will rejoice in learning this is my last column. After almost 25 years, I’ve decided to move on. The letter writers who never saw any value in what I presented will have to find someone else as their target.
The Reminder, like many other news outlets, is facing budget cuts and must put their resources into news coverage. There are many vital issues that require coverage and frankly that’s where every cent should go. The Reminder continues, despite these challenges, to be completely dedicated to local news coverage.
Payton North, my successor, graciously offered me a once-a-month slot in light of the latest budget reductions, but there is a certain rhythm to what I do and I thought it would be difficult to accomplish with a monthly schedule. I respectfully declined her offer. I will always be grateful to her for allowing me to continue freelancing and writing a column for the last two-plus years after my retirement. She did not have to allow it. Thank you so much, Payton.
My decision comes at a real tipping point in the news industry. I worry all the time about the state of local media. What I worry about is not so much the ideology of these outlets but instead the deterioration of the number of outlets and their dedication to serving the community.
Locally, there has been a long painful downhill slide of daily papers — The Republican, the Westfield News and The Daily Hampshire Gazette. Recently, the anchors of Western Mass. News revealed on social media accounts there were substantial cutbacks at that station. New England Public Media has abandoned any original TV production, although they have created two new and worthy local radio programs. Commercial radio has, for the most part, seen the elimination of local news efforts. WHMP still has a local produced morning show and WHYN has one newsman creating newscasts. While news and public affairs programs used to be a backbone for radio, they no longer are.
What we are seeing locally, as well as across the nation, is traditional media struggling in the wake of younger generations rejecting them.
With that audience shrinkage comes a questioning from advertisers if these outlets are capable of reaching a multi-aged audience.
I understand the success of social media as a news source. I simply question the professionalism and the agenda of many posts. Yes, there are people with podcasts, both audio and video, that are covering national issues and do it with a rigor that denotes an educated approach. The difficulty is local coverage, which is what I do with the podcast I started last year — shameless plug.
I remember reading an article in Editor & Publisher in the early 2000s that spoke of the fact that newspapers had a fairly big profit margin in the pre-internet days, compared to other business sectors. When that profit margin started to decline, owners of many newspapers did something that actually made the situation worse: they started making cuts, specifically of content and the people who created that content.
The premise was that audiences wouldn’t notice it. Boy, the execs were wrong.
If you are trying to get people to look at your newspaper or watch a TV news show or listen to a morning radio show, the very last thing to do is to eliminate content because it is the content that draws their participation. And without those eyeballs and ears, the advertisers are not being served and they will walk. Remember, their ads finance a media outlet.
The newspaper industry is especially entrenched with this strategy of cutting even with evidence that it doesn’t work. Audiences now know what the bosses are doing.
Many newspapers are owned by corporate concerns — remember newspapers, radio stations and TV stations were once locally owned businesses — and there appears to be a severe lack of understanding about what media outlets have to do to survive today.
Are there solutions? Yes! Do corporate types want to hear them? No. They are still cutting away in the hopes they can arrest the bleeding and they still haven’t learned that this tactic doesn’t work.
I’m very lucky to be able to continue being a journalist on Focus Springfield community television and on my podcast. I have a lot to keep me busy.
In the meantime, I will continue to read, listen and watch local media and I will be rooting for their survival and hopefully their resurgence.
Objective professional journalism is vital, especially in these times where the increasing torrent of misinformation threatens our democracy.
So, folks, even the ones who hated me, thanks for reading my columns for the past almost 25 years. I deeply appreciate it.
G. Michael Dobbs has worked for Reminder Publishing for 23 years of his nearly 50-year-career in the Western Mass. media scene, and previously served as the executive editor. He has spent his time with the publisher covering local politics, interesting people and events. The opinions expressed within the article are that of the author’s and do not represent the opinions and beliefs of the paper.
