Journalism Matters: What it is we’re building here

The house will pass. The calendar will endure.

I was fined $50 at Rotary last week for blurring lines between news and opinion, so obviously not everyone agrees with what I believe was the most careful separation of the two among all the news media outlets in the world. No dog crap in our news coverage of Matthew and Tatiana Prince’s quest to build a large new home overlooking Old Town, and “Yellowstone” has stayed in the opinion section.

I’m happy to be shown where in fact we missed. Here’s a challenge: I don’t think you’ll find that in our news coverage. It should go without saying you won’t necessarily like my opinion in this column. But that’s not my concern; accuracy and relevance very much are.

The neighboring titans overlooking Old Town will never be besties, but I’ll venture that they’ll settle next door to each other into their respective homes, the perhaps surprising one still way larger than the other no matter what happens from here. The dogs, leashed properly, will be able to cross one property to a city trail, and the driveway across the other’s will get its building permit. Just my guess here. A wall will come down.

And the portion of the community that gets caught up in these things won’t even notice, having moved on to some other existential outrage on their feeds.

In any case, the row is not simply the sound of one hand SLAPPing. Democracy is not really at stake over Sasha and Mocha, or the rich guys going at each other.

I think you’ll be surprised how fast this one vanishes in the rearview mirror. Like Y2K. I’ve watched this happen over and over again with larger issues. This one at every level is smaller than made out in the moment.

So, yes, the humble community calendar stands up as much more important. It’s also a better way to assess The Park Record owners’ intent with the paper than this blip.

For me, the calendar is the latest tangible progression toward a fully local paper that serves to strengthen community.

The first was in effect burning the boats behind me when I began in September. We unhooked from The Associated Press, which was a bigger deal than you might think. It means there’s no backup if you run out of local copy. So how do you make sure you’ll have enough material? I attribute more local stories to the jump by nearly half in our online reader metrics from a year ago.

The second was around Christmas making the paper free to the consumer and reducing subscriptions to the cost of delivery. Risky, but I think it makes sense for the business if done correctly and advertisers understand the value gained from visitors and especially second-home owners who more readily pick up the paper. The initial growth in circulation at around 30% is encouraging, and we haven’t even really begun the stage two to going free, which is being everywhere.

Starting the full-page calendar in print, or restarting what disappeared during Covid rather, is the third step. Calendars might not seem like such big deals, but the time required and the part of a position we hired recently to do this is a commitment to community I very much appreciate.

There is more to come that will endure, laid in a sense brick by brick, and it will take far longer than that house on the hill to build.

The winds will blow, the fines will come. I don’t have to agree while settling up, nails in my teeth, hammer in hand. We all really do have a future to build. That’s what the calendar represents.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.