The state’s news ecosystem experienced earthquakes this month. Wyoming Public Radio thought it might be a good time to take the temperature of journalism across the state.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards sat down for a conversation with Melissa Cassutt, the director of the Wyoming Local News Fund that recently released a study on Wyoming’s news ecosystem. She also works for the Solutions Journalism Network.
They were joined by Rod Miller, who is currently a digital news opinion columnist for WyoFile. He also wrote in the past for Cowboy State Daily, where he pushed back on the idea that Wyoming has a news desert.
Melodie Edwards: Melissa, I wonder if you can talk about the turbulence that we have been seeing in our news ecosystem over the last couple of weeks.
Melissa Cassutt: I spent a week in the Wind [River Range] on a horse packing trip and I came out to my phone dinging, like, ‘The Pinedale Roundup has closed, all these newspapers have closed,’ and I was like, ‘Oh no, this is not what we wanted.’ But it did reinforce the vulnerabilities that we knew about in our ecosystem. We have counties that are served by one newsroom that was staffed by one person, and a lot of those counties are owned by one chain. Were that chain to go out of business, all of these counties could go dark, and that's essentially what happened.
Thankfully, who came in was a local owner. I think that's the best case scenario of what could have happened. A family that has longtime roots in Wyoming, that has a well-versed understanding of this industry, came in and picked up all those papers. It could have gone a completely different direction, and it happened so quickly.
ME: Rod, what was your reaction when you heard that news?
Rod Miller: The eight local newspapers that closed their doors, but briefly, were like one department of an offshore media conglomerate, and when the parent company went belly up, so did the eight local newspapers in Wyoming.
On their own, each of those local newspapers would be solvent. They have a solid subscriber base. They have advertisers who've been advertising with them for decades. All the ingredients are there for a local newspaper.
Statewide digital media like I work for, WyoFile, Cowboy State Daily, they can't fill that gap. We can't put stringers in Lusk or Torrington or Kemmerer to report to a statewide news office like WyoFile. The economics just aren't there. But those local communities deserve that kind of coverage. So I think the fact that the national conglomerate went tits up and Wyoming folks bought those eight newspapers is maybe the best thing that could have happened to those eight newspapers.
ME: Melissa, when you took a look at that survey, where do you feel like we stand as far as, are we a news desert or not?
MC: This is always one that I'm like, ‘No, with a caveat.’ We have a local source in every county. But like I said, if you live in those counties where you have a local source, but it's one person who's working their tail off to try and cover an entire county by themselves, they cannot physically do it. If you live in that community, you are feeling what a local news desert feels like. I don't think we are a news desert the way that other states are, but I think there's room for improvement. What we saw in the study was, well, we have high trust still in our state of our local news, there's still dissatisfaction with what our local news is providing in some areas.
ME: Rod, when you were over at Cowboy State Daily, you wrote an article that was called “Wyoming is a news desert with a helluva lot of rain.”
RM: It is, yeah. What we're talking about are the small towns that comprise Wyoming. I'm thinking back to my days as a young man and a kid reading the Rawlins Daily Times, which was a daily newspaper, and Rawlins was probably 5 to 6,000 people. Back then, there was a society page that said on such-and-such a day, Peg Miller hosted a tea at her house for 20 ladies and she served lamb nuts and Everclear, and the talk was all about Bridge Club or something.
The heartbeat of that community was reading about what went on in town in the newspaper. That cannot be replicated by a statewide organization like Casper Star [Tribune]. In fact, the big statewide newspapers are the ones that are suffering from the proliferation of digital news because a digital news organization does not have the capital requirement of a Casper Star. Well, you need a big Heidelberg press and an office, etc.
That model can't be sustained today and produce a product that has meaning on the streets of Lusk or Kemmerer. Can't do it. Local reporters [and] local editors can do that.
ME: When I go and look at the News Desert map, Idaho has seven counties without papers. Utah has six without papers. Colorado has seven. Nebraska has seven. Montana has three. We have zero counties without a paper.
What was amazing to me was the reaction of our state. There's something about Wyomingites. We are valuing our local news in a way that our neighbors aren't. What do you guys think about that?
RM: Wyoming people are pretty goddamn demanding, in that respect. They don't like not knowing what's going on and they'll let you know that. God bless them.
MC: I definitely agree with that, and they're connected, and they want to be connected. They would like to have it continue in a historic tradition, either through a paper, through a radio station, a way that it's been delivered in the past. Because they're so connected, they know the people who’re producing the news. They don't feel disconnected from their newspapers, [or] from their reporters.
RM: We, I believe, tend to accept information more from people we know. Our neighbors: the reporters that we've met, the editors that drank whiskey with us at the bar. We may not agree with what they're telling us, but we respect that it comes from a reliable source. I think there's an ingrained suspicion of getting information from strangers.
ME: I wonder if you guys can talk a little bit about what does a healthy way look forward look like?
RM: I would submit that, in the history of journalism, there has never existed a monolithic, universally accepted, purely objective source of news. That has never happened. The smorgasbord seems to be the free market solution. You go to the supermarket, you don't have just one brand of pasta available to you.
News should be the same way. People should be able to have a source of their news and opinion. And I include the opinion page as the endocrine system of any newspaper. It pumps out our hormones. The consumer should have a range of options from which he or she can pick or choose for a news source that satisfies them. That's the American way.
MC: I do agree the more media you have, the better off communities are and the more it shrinks, the worse off the community tends to be. At some point, some of these communities had like four or five different options between different newspapers, alt weeklies, [and] radio stations. As we see digital outlets come online and different newsletters, social media channels, all those things contribute to what can be a very vibrant discussion.
Right now, as we were talking about news deserts, Wyoming has at least one in every county. But one is a very low bar, and in many cases that one is staffed by one person. We don't want to be clawing back from nothing, but the more we can have, the more vibrant our communities are gonna be.
ME: Where would you guys both feel like you're still having some concern? Adam's Publishing Group still owns four of our bigger papers in the state. Casper Star Tribune is owned by Lee Enterprises. Where are places you can see we still have weaknesses in our media ecosystem?
RM: I'm going go out on a limb and say, unless and until someone amends the First Amendment or the Constitution, I have no concerns. That's how I operate.
MC: There's one area I still would love to see some movement in that identified in the study, which is a local source of Spanish language news that just doesn't exist fully yet. Todo TV in Teton County that is building up and has really gotten its legs under itself recently and is becoming a really great local source for Spanish language news.
You mentioned chain owners. Lee Enterprise is definitely a larger chain, Adam's publishing group. We're seeing movements in some of those communities, like the Laramie Reporter has come in to fill a gap. But there's still definitely a need in those communities where we've seen a loss of some of that reporting.
ME: In your article in the Cowboy State Daily, you argued for a smorgasbord, and that's kind of where we're headed and that it's okay if we aren't trying to go back to a time when we had one objective, universally-trusted news organization that fills all of our news needs. That a smorgasbord involves hyperlocal, small-town papers and some of those bigger digital papers. I wonder if you guys can talk a little bit about what a healthy way forward looks like?
RM: I would submit that, in the history of journalism, there has never existed a monolithic, universally-accepted, purely objective source of news. In the absence of that, the smorgasbord seems to be the free market solution.
You go to the supermarket, you don't have just one brand of pasta available to you. News should be the same way. People should be able to have a source of their news and opinion (and I include the opinion page as the endocrine system of any newspaper. It pumps out our hormones). The consumer should have a range of options from which he or she can pick or choose for a news source that satisfies them. That's the American way.
MC: I do agree the more media you have, the better off communities are and the more it shrinks, the worse off the community tends to be. At some point, some of these communities had like four or five different options between different newspapers, alt weeklies, [and] radio stations. As we see digital outlets come online and different newsletters, social media channels, all those things contribute to what can be a very vibrant discussion right now.
As we were talking about news deserts, Wyoming has at least one in every county. But one is a very low bar, and in many cases that one is staffed by one person. We don't wanna be clawing back from nothing, but the more we can have, the more vibrant our communities are gonna be.
ME: As you mentioned, some of these very small papers only have one person, which means that they don't have an editor. It lowers that bar even farther when you don't have a rigorous editorial process.
A lot of digital papers kind of tend to give their readers or listeners what it is that they want. The media is constantly getting accused of bias.
I really liked what the former dean of the journalism school [Cindy Price Schultz] here at the University of Wyoming said, which was, the news media also does need to be able to give their readers a little oatmeal. They don't want to eat it, but they kind of need it. Sometimes, that is our job.
That was reinforced when I interviewed Jen Sieve-Hicks, who's just bought out these eight papers that almost closed. She said the same thing, that sometimes our job in the media is to be leaders and to say the hard things to make people uncomfortable. Too much of ‘the customer is always right’ can be problematic as well. Thoughts on that.
RM: I write an opinion column. I mentioned I consider the opinion page to be the genitalia of a news organization. I relish that. I relish that. I love punching people's buttons and provoking them to think, and presenting an alternative point of view that might make them run from the room like their hair's on fire.
But they need to read it. They need to know those ideas are out there, and I think I'm pretty much covered by the First Amendment when I do that.
MC: I agree with you that there is this balance of what the community wants to read about and what the community needs to know. We asked in our ecosystem study, what topic areas are you most engaged in.
I do think there's a component of what people think they should read and what we know about what people actually click on. Because what they actually click on are stories about crime and stories that are headline grabbing. What they need, at times, are ‘This is happening in your county right now. This tax is going to be passed. Here's your opportunity to comment on it, one way or the other.’ ‘Your school board is doing this, or your hospital board is doing this. You need to know about this before it's too late.’ Those are part of your steady diet that you need to know about, and this is the role that your local media plays.
It was kind of interesting, in the ecosystem study, what people said they want and then comparing that to as myself as a journalist and talking to other journalists, what we know people actually are clicking on. They also like the weather. That is always at the top.
ME: Especially in Wyoming, right?
MC: Especially in Wyoming.
ME: As the Buffalo Bulletin and Rob Mortimer start to get their hands around this giant project that they have taken on to manage all these papers across the state, what advice might you offer them or what hopes do you have for them?
MC: I am hopeful that they use all their years of experience and wisdom to revitalize these publications and really give the communities back something that they've lost over the past several decades. These publications have been chipped away at.
RM: The only advice I would offer Rob and his crew is more scratch and sniff centerfolds in the papers! But that probably only appeals to me.
Beyond that, I don't have any advice to offer them. Those guys have been down this trail before.
If I have any advice, it might be to the state of Wyoming. If, as we said, these local newspapers provide a valid civic benefit, perhaps the responsibility for maintaining that lies not just on the citizens of Lusk or Kemmerer, but on the state as well, to make sure we have a well-informed citizenry.
We might want to take a look at the state funding mechanism. By that I do not mean the state owning a means of information. But I mean giving Rob and his folks access to community development block grants, to maybe a state loan program that would help them raise the capital that it takes to make sure those papers get on the street.
MC: Without an informed citizenry, without an informed public, it's really hard to be informed on anything else going on.
RM: I can read the negative comments to the podcast now.
MC: Send all your comments to Rod! He'll give you his direct email!
RM: He'll tell you where to put them!
