More newspaper progress
A second newspaper for Southern Oregon
The Rogue Valley Tribune is gearing up, staffing up, renting space, building a photo library, and getting ready to publish.
Ronald Kramer, Executive Director of the Southern Oregon Historical Society, confirmed yesterday that SOHS will be leasing space to the Rogue Valley Tribune. The Rogue Valley Tribune is the second newspaper to see an opportunity in the market left vacant by the abrupt closure of Medford's Mail Tribune. The RVT will publish in a different format from old-style newspapers. It plans a 24-7 on-line newspaper, with a printed version published three times a week.
The Historical Society owns the large downtown building that once was the home for JCPenney department store. The two-story building houses the Historical Society's library, archives, exhibits, and headquarters. It has 5,000 square feet of upstairs space being readied to house the RVT. Heidi Wright, the COO of RVT's corporate parent, the EO Media Group, said they plan to hire 14 staff people in the newsroom, including reporters, photographers, and editors.
Kramer said the Historical Society was "not playing favorites." He was referring to the competition between the Daily Courier, which is expanding from its Grants Pass base, and the Rogue Valley Tribune, which is entering fresh territory. Kramer said the new tenant is a "great match for our situation." The “situation” is that the SOHS needs income.
In decades past, the Historical Society had its own tax base and the financial resources to run a large museum in Jacksonville, manage other properties, and place multiple "living history" characters onto the streets of Jacksonville. That all ended. Changes in state law allowed special-purpose tax levies, including the local Historical Levy, to be incorporated into the county general fund. The Jackson County commissioners absorbed the Historical Levy and defunded the SOHS. That left the SOHS owning large, complicated properties and archives, including the historic Hanley Farm and the JCPenney building, but without sufficient income to operate them. The upstairs floor of the JCPenney building gives SOHS a rent-paying tenant.
The building modifications are physical evidence that a newspaper is on its way to Medford. The photo of the JCPenney building is another. The RVT lacks a bank of stock images of the Rogue Valley to use in upcoming news stories. Their editor, David Smigelski, said newly hired photojournalists were on the streets right now building that inventory. The JCPenney photo is an example of that work.
Smigelski said this is a new era for newspapers in Southern Oregon because the RVT owners are newspaper people, not finance people. Smigelski had worked for the Mail Tribune in the past. He said the Mail Tribune's previous owners "talked about money, money, money." They were in the money business, not the news business, he said.
The Murdoch owners told us, "Do more with less." The Gateway owners said, "Do less with less." Our little valley's newspapers became a plaything for giant multi-national players.
Things are different now, Smigelski said. At last a family-owned newspaper returns to Medford, and they care about news.
The Daily Courier is also family owned and it also seems to care about local news. Newspaper competition is new to Southern Oregon. I like what I see of the Daily Courier. They are making waves by closely reporting on the Josephine County commission. Good. They are doing the watchdog job of a newspaper. We have not had much of that in Medford for years. The competition is already helping improve news quality. An early version of yesterday's blog post said that the Rogue Valley Tribune announced plans for 14 new reporters, substantially more than what the Daily Courier planned. The editor of the Courier promptly contacted me. He reminded me they had announced 14 overall news staff, of whom only seven were reporters. I welcome the correction.
I urge readers not to wait on the sidelines to see how things settle out. This is an expensive time for each paper as each attempts to build a subscriber base. Newspapers and their advertisers need an audience. Be that audience. Subscribe to both. We can support two newspapers. Competition will sharpen the news and rebuild a news-reading better-informed citizenry. If there is an audience, advertisers will pay to reach that audience. This can work. Two are better than one. And far better than none.