Local journalism needs local support to survive

By Lethbridge Herald on August 16, 2024.

LEAVE IT TO BEEBER
Al Beeber – Managing Editor

They’re calling it my farewell tour and I’m at a loss for words. Well, I’m not because you’ve all seen how long these columns can get, let’s be real about that.

But I’m surprised and humbled and flattered that so many people have been reaching out to me and others about their concerns for the future of the Herald after I clean out my desk – which should take a month or two – and step away on Dec. 27 for an unknown future.

When I attended the unveiling of the new name for the old Sportsplex – VisitLethbridge.com Arena – I heard from a few people those concerns and I wasn’t expecting it.

Nor did I anticipate hearing those same concerns expressed by my long retired and much missed Herald colleagues Bob and Sheryl (why’s there a volcano growing out of your head, Al?) Crowe who I ran into at the MPE Link Pathway ceremony in Coaldale last week celebrating the opening of the first phase of the path that will eventually link that town to Lethbridge.

But what I’m hearing where ever I go, from the grocery store to events I’m covering, is that what we do here in the Herald newsroom matters to the public.

Local journalism matters, not me, but local journalism itself and members of the community from golf courses to the farmers market are worried when I finish cleaning this desk – which I should probably start working on today, come to think of it – how the void of my departure will be filled.

I know I do a lot of work here – which is in part due to necessity and part due to my feeling that managers need to lead by example. If we put in the long hours and do the heavy lifting, then that should send a message to other staff that we value their own efforts. 

That’s what leadership is about after all, it’s about showing by example how things should be done and how to get things done.

Being a manager doesn’t mean starting a day whenever the urge hits or leaving early because other people can do the work. It doesn’t mean making other workloads heavier because that’s what a boss can do.

Being a leader means taking the bull by the proverbial horns and helping to get the job done. In my case, that means doing whatever I can to cover a city of 106,000. And it’s not easy with our staffing levels.

All traditional media know that. It’s hard and exhausting work trying to cover everything when we are all under-staffed. 

And we hear complaints about that – people ask why they should support local media when we’re not covering everything going on? 

The answer is because local journalism matters. We are the ones who report – as best we can – on the issues that matter to people, including government.

But like businesses which operate in our communities, government too often isn’t supporting us through advertising revenues. Yes, we get some from the City of Lethbridge and others levels but you know who is also getting those advertising dollars? Social media companies which don’t cover events at City Hall, who don’t write about provincial and federal politics, who don’t cover minor hockey or university sports. Or do advances on theatre productions or any range of events happening in our communities.

They simply take all the money being thrown at them and we in traditional – or legacy as some call us now – media rely on fewer staff to cover growing and more diverse communities.

For government, having fewer local journalists could benefit them if they don’t want transparency – instead they can rely upon their communications teams to post material on their websites or they can pay Facebook to advertise what they’re doing. At the expense of strong local journalism which every community in this country deserves and needs!

But it’s hard to provide strong local journalism when businesses and government advertise on social media! It’s damn hard to be blunt. It’s frustrating and it’s exhausting.

I know how hard I and my staff work here. I’m in here 11 hours a day, every day. By the end of each day, my eyes are shot, my blood pressure high and my nerves frazzled. I turn off the phone before 7 at night and hide just to try recuperating for the next day ahead.

I work the occasional weekend, too because I don’t have enough staff to cover shifts when someone is away. 

At 65, I’m working harder than I did at 25 because I have to. I managed to take only a very small part of one week off this year for vacation since I was in the office four days out of five and I won’t get another day off until the Monday after my last on the job. 

Last year, my only time off was to get cataracts removed and a week to do yard work. That’s it. And I came in on the following weekends to catch up on lost time.

And that is not sustainable so that’s why I’ve chosen to pack it in at the end of this year.

Lest anyone say the Herald owners should just hire more staff, those expenses have to be paid for by revenue which is generated by advertising dollars and subscriptions.

 But social media is taking a huge bite out of the revenues of newspapers and other media outlets because so many of those who cry “shop local” don’t walk the talk.

In retrospect, I often wonder if the internet should have been taken more seriously when it first began its growth in the early 1990s.

 But none of us – including media owners obviously – considered it a threat. It was a novelty, a passing fad, we thought. 

Yeah, right.

We were all wrong. We didn’t anticipate how the Internet would take over so quickly, never mind social media which for all intents and purposes didn’t exist before Facebook and Twitter. 

Major companies could sell cars, appliances, groceries, whatever on the Internet and reach a wider audience and obviously for less money. They could promote their products on their own websites and bypass traditional media which reacted too slowly and not strongly enough to defend our territory.

We didn’t promote ourselves as well as we should have, we didn’t respond to the threat as quickly as we should have.

And now we’re all suffering. 

Like many of you who have expressed your fears about the future of this newspaper after I leave, I share your concerns about traditional media. Just look at cable television for instance. How many people have cut the cord and gone to streaming services to get their movies, favourite sitcoms, drama and sports instead of spending money on cable?

 You see the impact of that in changes to TV newscasts, the cuts to those which we could benefit from if advertising revenue allowed us to increase our staff. But we can’t take advantage of a huge opportunity to make TV news less relevant to the public.

And how many pay a subscription to a music service instead of listening to local radio? 

We’re all in the same boat and it’s because the mantra of ‘shop local’ doesn’t apply to us in media anymore.

 And coverage of our communities suffers because of it since we all know Facebook and Google aren’t going to cover your local events. 

They’re simply going to pillage advertising revenue and line their faraway pockets with no concern for you, your events, your communities, your neighbours.

They don’t care. We do and if we are going to survive, we need a change in mindset among businesses, government and the public.

Shop local and keep local journalism alive!

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