While perusing the archives of the old Wayland Globe when I visit the Then & Now Historical Library in downtown Dorr, I’ve often come across material that helps explain today.
It’s like the old saying about learning from history.
Most recently I have stumbled onto the legal notices published in the 50 Years Ago section, where I have come to a greater understanding about why small town weekly newspapers have become extinct. Though many observers have insisted reasons were the changing of the times and the invisible hand of the free market that did in publications like the Globe, I have become growingly aware of legal notices.
No lesser an expert than the late Helen Jane Helmey, Globe Publisher Irv Helmey’s wife, demonstrated to me the massive role of legal notices in the economic health of the weekly newspaper. No lesser an expert than Publisher Cheryl Kaechele at the Allegan County News & Gazette later corroborated the work the of the legendary “H.”
Mrs. Helmey very carefully followed the activities of all school boards, township boards and city councils and as a result the Globe often published a huge number of legal notices required by the government to let everyday folks know what what’s happening.
The Globe in virtually every edition printed township notices of upcoming elections, boards of review meetings, special meetings and just about any occurance the government deemed necessary for newspapers to print by law.
H meticulously examined and then published all possible legal notices from the City of Wayland, the Hopkins, Martin and Wayland school boards and the townships off Wayland, Salem, Monterey, Dorr, Hopkins, Leighton, Watson and Martin.
A couple of decades later, Ms. Kaechele flatly told me that when legal notices are published as authorized, any newspaper worth its salt could make ends meet economically, even with high prices of ink and distribution costs. That meant any advertising at all could function as profit.
But the rules of the game changed over time. Somehow, municipalities gradually became spared from the requirements of publishing minutes of their meetings and laws changed for having so many elections, reducing them to just four per year.
This meant that the government’s costs for doing almost anything were being cut at the expense of newspapers publishing the notices.
One of the most dramatic forms of legal notices was a form for decoration of intentions on spending federal revenue sharing payments that began under the stewardship of President Richard M. Nixon. But by the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and company eliminated the need for this process by eliminating revenue sharing altogether.
The result was the tremendous cut in revenue for newspapers, which already had been struggling because of rising costs for ink and distribution. So while it was true that advertisers were beginning to use the more glitzy and easier access of television and later Internet modes of hawking their products and services, the role of government contraction of its role cannot be overlooked.
So it wasn’t entirely the free market and the march of time that tossed newspapers to the dung heap of history. We can also blame that pesky gummint.
