Tara’s Takes
Last week, I spent a few days in Washington D.C. for the News Media Alliance Support Journalism fly-in. I spent time in advocacy meetings discussing the importance of local journalism, the people in our communities who are reporting firsthand what is happening in their communities.
One of our main topics was the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act. It sounds complicated but it truly is very simple. Stealth bots enter websites in the U.S. every day without identifying themselves or by using a false identity.
For example, as a business owner, you may want Google to be able to enter your site as a bot and inventory your stories so when someone uses their search engine, they can direct them to your site.
A stealth bot pretends it’s Google, enters your site, strips your content in a few seconds and leaves. It now has all the content that you have worked so hard to gather and write, the content that you paid employees to cover, write, produce and proof. It can take that content and sell it on the black web. This allows people to get your content for free.
The bill is asking that bots must identify themselves so businesses can choose to keep them out if their intent is damage to the company.
It seems like a straightforward issue and I hope it is.
I sat in small meetings with Steve Grove of the Star Tribune as he explained the dramatic decrease in his search engine traffic due to these bots as well as other issues their company is facing in the industry.
I sat in small meetings with a VP of USA Today as he explained the billions — yes billions — of bots that hit their website every week and the struggles, time and money his company has to put into protecting their content.
When it came to telling my story, it was simple. We’re not the big fish in the sea, but we’re still in the same waters. We don’t see things on the level that these larger papers do. But we also don’t have the margins they have. We rely on local advertising support in print and online to keep our papers alive. We rely on subscribers to purchase the content we spend so much time on. If they can get that elsewhere, if we can’t deliver readers to the advertisers, we lose. Then the community loses, too.
I came back from Washington D.C. just in time for National Newspaper week. The theme this year is simple: Rooted in Community. Committed to Truth.
In smalltown papers that goes even deeper. We are committed to our community for all events, not just the big things that are on the front page or might attract larger media to the area.
When there is a fire in Lake Benton, we’re covering it and depending on the size, other media may be, too, but we are also covering the school board, county board and city council. We’re attending chamber meetings and fundraiser breakfasts.
We sit through the controversial RTR School Board meetings that may have more community members attend, and we sit through RTR School Board meetings that are more “business as usual” and we may be one of the only or just a few in attendance.
We are at the 6:30 a.m. school board meetings in Hendricks and covering the other amazing things that the school is doing.
We’re at community festivals — the big ones like Box Car Days, and the smaller ones in a church basement. We’re at sporting events and unfortunate tragedies that hit our community, That’s the local newspaper. Rooted in Community.
We are the historical archive of the community. In 50 years, will people go searching on Facebook to find out what happened in their grandparents’ community? What will Facebook look like in 50 years? Will it even exist?
When families look for their history, they look to the newspaper. Without newspapers, small towns are only a blip on the big city radar if there is something large enough happening in town to warrant them to send someone out. We’re here every day. Without smalltown newspapers, a community becomes lost. National Newspaper Week reminds us not to let that happen.
Yes, I’ve spent time with people from large newspaper. Have you heard the saying “more money, more problems.” A larger company may not be the answer, but we are all fighting the same problems in the industry. Every newspaper serves a different community, but together we share the same purpose: keeping people informed, preserving the public record and protecting the public’s right to know.
Our industry is changing. There is no denying that. We launched a website at our Lincoln County papers last May to give readers options to get their local news. What will newspapers look like in 50 years? I can’t answer that. I can say, we still need local journalism in every community.
The platforms will change. Technology will change. The need for trusted local journalism won’t.
We believed in this so much that we took the leap in January and moved from owning one paper to owning four. Has everything gone as smooth as butter? Not a chance. But do we care for every single one of our communities just as we did with our first? 1,000% yes.
So this week, we’ll publish four more editions, We’ll deliver. We’ll take a quick breath and we’ll start on next week’s papers. Because community matters, local journalism matters and our newspapers matter.
Happy national Newspaper Week!
