The Press In The Valley: Tough Economic Times Take A Heavy Toll...Newspapers Don't Always Win...Readers Do Lose...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - That newspaper you get daily in McAllen? Yes, the one that looks as busy with excitable stories and color design as a Guatemalan skirt? That one. Well, the messy look was designed by a Cuban guy out of Miami, hired by Freedom Communications, Inc. a few years ago, when the company that owns The McAllen Monitor was horribly mired in bankruptcy court, seeking to unload its monstrous $750 million debt. It was reduced by almost half, as things turned out.

But this is about how the company - owner of The Monitor, the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen and The Brownsville Herald downriver - never did get the pulse of its geography or of its readers, primarily insular Hispanics uninterested in its less-government-is-best-government Libertarian politics. It is particularly timely as the business is still bleeding professionals and editions. The consensus is that newspapers across the country lost their way, that failure to re-invest profits in their operations, their desire to cut reporting staff and later cut out entire daily issues has led to their stunning demise. Somewhere in there, the Internet surfaced as a reason to fear the future and to cede position as the Fourth Estate in American life.

A few days back, it was reported that Freedom Communications, Inc. was once again interested in selling some of its newspapers. There were rumors that it would unload the struggling Valley Morning Star at a discount rate. If true, it wasn't the first time the Santa Ana, California-based company sought to sell its RGV properties. Way before the latest rumors surfaced, there was word that the three Valley newspapers were being shopped around, and that the company had gotten a sniff from the Wall Street Journal folks. Nothing came of it, and then the bad economy hit advertising, and then the slump came home to stay.

So, what does it all mean to the Rio Grande Valley?

First and foremost, it means less news coverage. The staff at The McAllen Monitor might be enough for that western Valley city, but staffs at the other two newspapers are bare-bone operations. No reporters equals no coverage, or less, if any. Editors have been shown the door, some transferred to RGV cities they don't exactly know or like. Paul Binz, editor of the Morning Star is gone, as is former Monitor Managing Editor Henry Miller. Marcia Caltabiano-Ponce, once a senior editor at The Monitor, is now editor of The Brownsville Herald. It wasn't that long ago that I ran into Henry Miller at a Starbucks in McAllen and he relayed info that Caltabiano-Ponce had continued to reside in McAllen even as she tried to edit the newspaper in Brownsville 60-some miles to the east. An out-of-town editor for The Herald? Sacrilege.

It's a bear to stomach when you know that a myriad of stories do not see light in the pages of these newspapers. That drug war going on barely miles across the Rio Grande has largely been relegated to coverage via social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, Monitor reporters rightly granting credit to that venue as their source of info related to murders, hangings, bombings and street firefights that ought to be witnessed and written about by these reporters. Indeed, it is also said that many, many residents of the RGV get their news about the drug war from Spanish-language television stations, something that a pair of decades ago wasn't even part of the local lifestyle. Today, even the newsrooms of the Valley's TV stations count their Mexican counterparts as sources of information. Gone are the days when these same Valley reporters damned Mexican reporters as being wildly unreliable and forever open to bribery.

It is, to be fair, a tough time for news media outlets from coast-to-coast.

Also to be noted is the fact that Freedom Communications has no monopoly on trimming the corporate fat. Major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News have seen the need to cut back. But Freedom's losing battle in the revenue fight has forced it to sell some once-lucrative properties, and then it faced the reality of losing some top executives, one of whom left the company to work for Playboy magazine.

In the Valley, the company's chief of operations is M. Olaf Frandsen, publisher of the local flagship McAllen Monitor and the man who oversees the other two newspapers, as well. He is shown in photo atop this story. Frandsen is a genial man. A transplant who studied in Arizona and a loyal employee who's made the circuit as editor of a number of company newspapers, he is also known as a headstrong administrator. His battles with McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez are legendary, especially the one involving Cortez's decision to fend off bad coverage by funneling his city's lucrative "Legal Notice" advertising to a small weekly in neighboring Pharr. The decision spurred Frandsen into rifling a terse letter to the mayor and the city commissioners, noting that The Advance newspaper in Pharr was not exactly a newspaper of record, of general interest, or even one based in McAllen, the very population that needed to see those legal notices.

Valley cities and towns may show the Year 2011 on their calendars, but life in any of them can also be questioned as being something of a throwback in culture and the ways of social progress. They are all still small enough to exert muscle against any outfit wishing to bring Big City ways. For residents of the Valley, Cortez going to a tiny newspaper to teach The Monitor a lesson is well within the creative scope of the local brain. Indeed, it likely would have gained a wildly positive vote of support, had The Monitor polled residents on the matter.

News here isn't what reporters in the Big City would wish to cover on a day-to-day basis. There's plenty of crime, theft, asaults, rapes, child and spousal abuse and murders, for the young cub reporter, but none of the three dailies do much investigative reporting - not lately, anyway.

Reporters generally are of the young variety; that is, they are journalists fresh out of college. They are not well-paid in the Valley, which means that they stay only as long as they have to, and only until they get an offer from a larger newspaper upstate. The company knows that these are jumping-point jobs for these reporters. They hire them for two-three years, lose them, and hire a new batch. Lost in all that is the value of experience and local knowledge.

It's hard to tell what will become of Freedom in the long run. Its dependable moneymaker in the region is The Monitor and sources tell us it won't sell any of the three dailies on a solo basis. Apparently, you can buy all three, but not simply one. In the current market for newspapers, well, let's just say you'll find more interest in a lackluster minor league baseball team than you will in a good newspaper.

But who knows?

Already, in Harlingen, word in the streets is that a new print newspaper effort may soon be launched, one owned by a local citizen, perhaps a local group. The Morning Star, they say, is simply not doing the job and is largely giving-off the impression that it has given up the fight. In Brownsville, some 25 miles to the east, The Herald is hearing the same complaint. Bloggers there have begun to leap headfirst onto its stage, all of them taking the critical tack, often damning the newspaper for its failures to cover stories they feel ought to be covered, while at the same time ballyhooing their efforts as newfangled news sources.

It is a hostile takeover of sorts.

Freedom's newspapers may be the ones in the news racks at the streetcorner and in the cafes, but they are no longer the only game in town. It's not necessarily their fault, but they are feeling the pinch from all sides.

For readers, it's never an emotional issue of being loyal or provincial. Those days are gone, too.

But, then, news never has known fencing or geography. And in the day of the Internet and the harried, 24-hour cable news cycle, stopping to wait on a laggard is not part of the deal. Americans have not shed many tears for dying newspapers. The Valley likely won't, either...

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