Yes It Is, It’s True: Globe’s death was slow and painful

“Pay attention… and connect the dots.” — My customary advice to anyone who will listen.

I am surprised so many are surprised with the demise of the Penasee Globe at the end of this month. This was a slow-motion death of an American institution — the weekly community newspaper.

Anyone familiar with Prof. Robert Putnam’s landmark book “Bowling Alone” had to see this coming. Putnam outlined the disturbing trends of loss of community spirit and social capital that had marked small towns and cities across the United States since the mid-20th century. He noted the slow, but sure process in which people go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV or get on the Internet on weekdays and then spend their weekends watching sports on TV, doing chores around the house and outdoors and meanwhile rarely have a true idea who their neighbors are.

The casualties of such changes in lifestyles are community groups committed to the social good. Service clubs such as the Odd Fellows, Rebekahs and the Grange have disappeared and others, such as the Masons, AAUW, Rotary and Kiwanis are virtually on life support in many areas.

Putnam said there have been a number of causes — television, women leaving home and taking on more active roles in the work force, the Internet and the explosion of technology.

Another casualty is the community newspaper, which very likely is well on its way to joining the milk man, doctors who make house calls, the full-service gas station jockey, bowling pin setters and mom and pop grocery stores in the dust bin of history. Local newspapers have been around since the early days of this nation, but their influence and importance have waned, especially when pitted against news from TV, the Internet and other sources, which are faster and easier for the consumer.

An alarming result is that eventually local government officials will be able to conduct business without much, if any, oversight. The press historically has been the watchdog, the means by which local folks learn what local officials are doing with public funds and what local laws they are enacting.

Television and large market media do not care to invest very often in small communities because there is little in return in terms of advertising revenue. The only time metropolitan broadcast media might come to a local school board, city or village council, or township board meeting is when something particularly unusual or spectacular is occurring.

Community journalism in bygone days was dominated by “news about people you know,” your neighbor’s visit with Uncle Louie or Aunt Pittypat, or an unfortunate fall down the stairs that caused a brief visit with the doctor. What was referred to as “correspondence” was written or called in by citizenry.

Today that very same kind of news is on Facebook.

Missing in action these days is a report on the local planning commission or township board. I go to as many of these meetings as possible, and most of the time I am the only one present who will tell others what happened. Otherwise, you’ll have to ask the board members or council members yourself, and don’t count on a full and factual report.

The Wayland Globe first was printed in 1884 by George Mosher. His son, Rollo G., took over in 1919 and he sold the operation to Irvin P. and Helen Jane Helmey in 1953. I got to know the Helmeys by taking my first full-time journalism job at the Globe in 1972. I left in 1976 to work at the Albion Evening Recorder, a six-day-a-week daily.

The Recorder and its sister paper, the Marshall Evening Chronicle, went belly up in the 1990s, and to this day I believe they were the canary in the coal mine. Other small-town newspapers since then have folded, papers such as the Homer Index, the Fennville Herald and the Newaygo Republican, to name just a few.

Ron Carlson and Nila Aamoth purchased The Globe in 1986 and a couple of decades later sold it to the Advance newspaper group, publishers of the Grand Rapids Press and Kalamazoo Gazette. The Advance is the largest publisher of newspapers in Michigan, but it has had to cut back dailies in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids to just three days a week and its commitment to seven weeklies has been dwindling slowly.

Telltale signs about the Globe began when its headquarters in town was moved from the Helmey Building to a small office on South Main. It became very difficult for people to make a local call to their newspaper. And staff members were reduced, to the point there was only one part-time reporter at the end, who wasn’t encouraged to cover a whole lot of local developments. The news costs money, it doesn’t make money.

Even with the weekly inserts from Harding’s, Dick’s, Town & Country, Family Farm & Fleet and Do-It Best Hardware, the Globe still couldn’t make it worthwhile for the business of making a profit.

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.” — Stringer Bell to a woman whose son he had killed in prison in “The Wire.”

The Globe’s demise has been too much like death from cancer. It’s been slow and painful for anyone who cherished news about their community. But the times, they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan sang more than 55 years ago. And the awful truth is that the quaint part of small town life no longer is viable in a modern world that wants bigger, stronger and faster.

It is with a heavy heart that I say good-bye to an institution of more than 135 years in Wayland, Hopkins and Martin. It had a good run for most of the years. But the last decade had found it in the twilight of its autumn.

It’s almost like saying good-bye to your dog, or to an old friend who just can’t go on any longer. May it rest in peace and be fondly remembered.