Here is an interview on Wyoming Public Radio with Cindy Price Schultz, head of the U.W. Journalism Department. In the interview, she calls Wyoming a “news desert," and I must take stern exception to that.
If she is talking about the slow death of print journalism, the daily newspapers that once thudded on porches all across the Big Empty, she is correct. The nostalgic days of newsprint and paperboys are gone, and they ain’t coming back.
Here’s a case in point. The Casper Star-Tribune was once the flagship newspaper of the Cowboy State and, in its heyday, had a circulation of 30,000 or so. Today, it's a tiny fraction of that. Schultz correctly identifies the factors that are causing print journalism in Wyoming to wither on the vine.
But, to call Wyoming a news desert is fake news.
More folks are reading Wyoming news today than ever before. They’re just not getting ink on their fingers as they read it.
Digital media outlets are replacing paper & ink news sources as we speak. You are reading this rant on a digital news source. I rest my case.
The news organ for which I write, Cowboy State Daily, has a circulation of more than 72,000 subscribers to its daily newsletter and more than 130,000 in Facebook followers.
No traditional newspaper in Wyoming’s history has ever approached numbers like these. (For that matter, no other digital news outlet is remotely close to these numbers either).
And CSD is not the only paperboy on the block. There are a handful of statewide digital outlets and a myriad of local organizations that provide news via electrons rather than newsprint through regular digital publications, podcasts, blogs and other means.
I’ll betcha that more Wyomingites are reading more news than ever before via these new digital sources. News desert, my Aunt Fanny!
However, Schultz seems to disparage digital news media as somehow less balanced or more biased than “traditional” newspapers.
That, dear reader, is not a function of the media but rather a true indication of the evolution of readership. It is a clear validation of McLuhan’s statement that “the media IS the message”.
It also validates the cornerstone of capitalism, that the market rewards what it prefers.
The news market in Wyoming today is a smorgasbord of media that appeal to the tastes of readers across the political spectrum. In reality, that has also been the history of print media.
Since the invention of movable type, there has never been one single, monolithic newspaper that has been everything for everyone, and presented information in a perfectly balanced manner.
I consider Cowboy State Daily to be slightly right of center in its presentation, like me. And like most of Wyoming’s readers. If you like it, read it. If you don’t, keep shopping around.
If you want your news more on the progressive side, you have options in other digital outlets. If you like hair-on-fire conservatism, there are outlets that should fit your pistol just fine. But you won’t find a single source, nor could you ever, that has it all in one place.
Schultz also bemoans the lack of editorial “guidance” to reporters in digital media. Speaking again for CSD, the staff has decades of experience apiece and collectively probably a couple centuries in the business. They have scalps on the wall and major awards on the mantel.
This crew most certainly does NOT need a sheepdog of an editor to keep them in line. I’d imagine our competitors are in the same boat.
While Professor Schultz seems to focus on “fairness” in the press, our Constitution focuses only on the freedom of the press. A free press isn’t constrained to publish only what pleases the reader. If there is any Constitutional constraint, it is only that the press is free to publish what it damn well pleases.
In the digital media atmosphere of today, the reader is free to gravitate to any number of options. If you don’t like what one outlet is publishing, go find another.
The choice is the readers, and that’s exactly as it should be in a pluralistic society like ours.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
