One reads that the Daily Union has a new publisher. Stories about that chain publisher show that (so far) it has changed little at its papers. A sale of some kind, to someone, is no surprise. The new publisher has a string of small-town papers, and no sign of a strategy for better reasoning or better writing at any of them. Even practically, they’ve no unified look to any of the publications purchased over the last few years, and no compelling digital strategy for them.
(The patriarch of the family is reportedly a billboard magnate and Trump supporter, but the papers acquired are mostly stumbling and ineffectual, with no evidence that anyone on staff could make Trumpism appear other than it is.)
These are troubled times for small, rural communities, and anyone taking over a publication in them with high hopes of quick success is deluded.
The day should begin not with grand expectations but with a diligent commitment to good reasoning and good writing, in the service of good principles. Officials and notables in these small places are mostly – but not always – situationally motivated, and that’s among the worst motivations.
One should hold to something bigger than the mutual back-patting of a few middling cronies. There are important ideas (of reasoning, politics & economics, law, history, philosophy, and conscience) to advance and defend. One begins each day with The Better Approach of the Dark-Horse Underdog.
The Daily Union has a new publisher?
No, it has a new old publisher.