RIP local news. Oh really?

The Chaska Herald, the Chanhassen Villager, and newspapers in Prior Lake, Savage, Shakopee, and Jordan published their final online and print editions on April 25 and 27. Sister publications Eden Prairie News and Lakeshore Weekly News shut down four years ago. All were part of Southwest News Media, a small but once robust chain of local community weeklies.

During their ad revenue-generating era from the 1960s through the 2000s, these “main street” papers were locally owned. But, with the gradual rise of the internet followed by the surge in smartphone use, the business models of both small local papers and large dailies failed to adapt quickly enough to survive.

Advertisers and want-ad placers have moved to online platforms, niche markets, and free ad spaces on social media to hawk used lawnmowers, Teslas, cupcakes, and life coaches.

The six southwest metro newspapers and Crow River Media papers in Hutchinson and Litchfield are owned by Media News Group, based in Denver. Media News Group, also known as Digital First Media, is owned by Alden Global Capital, a New York-based investment firm that operates like a hedge fund. Both Alden and MediaNews Group have shown little interest in investing in or developing new business models for journalism.

But there is more going on than suspect hedge funds. A recent study by Northwestern University found that last year alone, 130 newspapers either merged or closed – more than two per week.

Sometimes it’s personal

Over the past three weeks, Eden Prairie Local News has gathered reactions from our neighbors to their losses.

The swan song editions of the six weeklies were filled with mournful, nostalgia-soaked letters and praise for the editors and reporters whom readers had come to know and trust. These journalists served like caring hospice nurses as the Grim Reaper closed in.

Southwest News Media general manager Laurie Hartmann’s long, perceptive and poignant reply/goodbye to readers in the final edition of the Chaska Herald includes this thought: “Your kind comments and well wishes have reminded us that work we did each week mattered. The Chaska Herald could not have done what it did throughout its 162-year history without you.”

Versions of Hartmann’s salute to her colleagues and subscribers appeared in each of the Southwest News Media papers.

Tom Pearson was a Minneapolis Star paper boy in Richfield when he was 12 years old. Tom and Kim Pearson made Eden Prairie their hometown for 35 years before moving to Chaska two years ago. They’ve now lived through the shutdown of the Eden Prairie News and the Chaska Herald.

Tom told EPLN that he has always appreciated the coverage of local current events, calendars and news. But with the loss of the Herald, he asks: “We live in a country now that’s divided on so many issues. And in order to make smart choices and decisions about things, you need information. Where is that information going to come from?”

Retired Southwest News Media publisher Stan Rolfsrud also delivered newspapers as a kid. Using two Minneapolis Tribune shoulder delivery bags, the young lad trudged from house to house during dark, “miserable winter” mornings in south Minneapolis.

The job, however, propelled Stan to journalism stints with the Army at Fort Hood, Texas, a local Sun newspaper, and a career with Southwest News Media. The latter began when the Chaska Herald hired him in 1972. Stan retired in 2008, 12 years before the Media News Group takeover. He still lives in Eden Prairie and claims to have never crafted a résumé to apply for other work.

He says, “I think the final nail in the coffin (of community newspapers) was when they started giving away free classified ads on the internet.”

Rolfsrud’s crusty April 29 EPLN article reveals that this seasoned newsman is not prone to sentiments about a passing era. He does see a need to fix a media culture in which anyone can be a reporter, editor, publisher and click-bait influencer.

Read Stan Rolfsud’s article here.

Bruce Baird, sister JoAnne and brother Chris grew up on the east shore of Lotus Lake in Chanhassen. During the late 1960s, their dad, Stu Baird, was city editor at the Minneapolis Tribune.

Bruce’s recollections of the Herald speak to the joys only a community paper with broad readership can deliver. He was photographed by the Herald as a thespian in school plays, and his mug landed on its front page in 1969 as one of Chaska High’s top students. A sports headline dubbed his hockey-playing brother, Chris, “Gunner” for his rink skills. Had algorithmic hunches been involved back then, only their friends and grandparents would have known

A two-week notice

The closing of the six Southwest News Media papers was not a surprise given national trends and the 2020 shutdowns of the Eden Prairie News and Lakeshore Weekly News.

But Chaska Mayor Mark Windschitl told EPLN that it was “kind of a bombshell. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, we got an email from their editor saying they’re closing in two weeks.”

Windschitl and Kevin Wright, Chaska’s community engagement manager, had a few things to say. The first official city task was to find a nearby newspaper to replace the Herald with printed versions of the city’s legal notices. Wright said city staff quickly signed up with The Waconia Patriot (a Sun newspaper) and that the “legals” will also be posted on the city’s website. The city is also considering online options to fill the news gap created by the Herald’s closure.

“It’s kinda weird. If you’re looking for something in Chaska,” reflected the mayor, “you have to go to Waconia to look at it. But that’s the way it is.”

Windschitl noted that the first version of the Herald had begun publishing when Abraham Lincoln was president, 41 years before the first airplane flight.

The Herald’s empty but well-kept storefront office, built in 1871, looks out on brick-paved 2nd Street. There is no buzz. But, as subscriber numbers fell, says Windschitl, the Herald remained an important news source for older people. Windschitl is a retired career firefighter. “You know, I always say there’s nothing in it (the Herald), but you can’t wait until it came on Thursday to look at it,” he said. “You know it’s one of those things you hate until it’s gone, and then ya go, ‘I really do miss it.’”

“The Chanhassen Villager only began publishing in 1987,” noted former Mayor Denny Laufenburger. The active community leader works part-time in a tuxedo as a greeter/ emcee at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres. He shared his take on the loss of the Villager next to the Carver County Library. It’s where the dead paper is archived and can be read free of a website paywall.

“It’s not just an institution; it’s an incredible art form,” said Laufenburger. “I think of the journalists who practiced their craft and did it so very, very well.” He named a few of them: reporter Unsie Zuege, sports editor Eric Kraushar, editor Mark Olson, and editor Dick Crawford.

“They not only reported the news, they recorded history, they authenticated history, and that will be lost. I wonder how that will be replaced. Certainly the digital world is taking over.”

Laufenburger regrets that Southwest was unable to find a business model that could survive in the digital world. As vital as the new technology and smartphones are, he senses that they are destroying a part of our culture. “That’s a sad day for us.”

Media Wars: Episode I – A New Hope?

The handshakes, smiles, name tag signing, and networking percolated like a stovetop coffee pot in the Maple Leaf Banquet Room, American Legion Post 580. Chanhassen Rotary Club President Dave Neubauer called on club member Khai Tran for an announcement. It was 7:09 a.m. the morning before the Villager would dispatch its final stories.

Tran spoke of the closure and of Eden Prairie Local News organizing a meeting the following Monday. It would be a primer of sorts on how EP had responded to the loss of its chief community paper four years prior.

As Post 580 staff cleared the tables, Neubauer shared his thoughts with EPLN: “It is a sad state of affairs,” he said. He talked about the need for good information and added, “Rotary’s model is service above self. If you see a need, you fill a need.”

Eden Prairie Local News CEO and Publisher Steve Schewe is fond of saying “hyperlocal.” The word is batted about nonprofit startup news chats like a pickleball at Staring Lake Park. He used it some on Monday, April 29, at the Hennepin County Library near the mall.

Steve summoned mourners associated with the press from Chaska, Chanhassen, Hutchinson, Menomonie, Woodbury, Burnsville, Shakopee, and Edina. Among them was Laurie Hartmann, who joined Southwest News Media in 1980 as a Girl Friday at the Prior Lake American. Hartmann eventually became one of the chain’s longest-serving general managers and its caregiver in its final four years.

In the last issue, she wrote, “We are not alone in the decision to stop publishing. One-third of all newspapers across the United States have been forced to close in the past 20 years.”

As Schewe put it to this writer, these were “People traumatized by the sudden closing of their community newspapers (who) needed a place to grieve and to begin to think about what comes next.

Schewe, EPLN Board Chair Nancy Tyra-Lukens, editors Stuart Sudak and Joanna Werch Takes, founding editor Brad Canham, and Woodbury NewsNet’s Susan Kent and Lisa Gardner Springer from the Institute for Nonprofit News listened and shared tips and alerts about nonprofit news startups.

EPLN founding board member Mark Weber was also there, to support friends. Mark was hired by Southwest News Media in 1979 as a cub reporter for Eden Prairie News. During his 34 years, Weber also served as editor and publisher and then as general manager of the parent company. His shorthand writing skills are helping him to again cover city council and planning commission hearings, this time for Eden Prairie Local News.

After nearly four years of online publishing, the EPLN team has learned a lot about nonprofit news initiatives owned and operated by locals. It motors forward, fueled mostly by sweat equity and passion.

While hosting an EPLN table at the Eco Expo (a Rotary event in early April), Tyra-Lukens was asked if the EPLN team would help other potential startups. “We would be happy to talk about how we got started and what they need to do in order to start their own community online newspapers,” she said.

And so it goes.

Editor’s note: Writer Jeff Strate is an EPLN founding board member.