![\"Independent](\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/Independent-cover.jpg\")
<\/a>What happens when a small town loses its local newspaper?<\/p>\n<\/a>What happens when a small town loses its local newspaper?<\/p>\n
Derek Brouwer, a former Billings Gazette reporter now working for the weekly Missoula Independent, attempts to answer that question in a front-page story<\/a> published yesterday.<\/p>\n He writes of the demise of the Bigfork Eagle, which went from independent ownership to becoming a property of Lee Enterprises (publisher of the Gazette, the Missoulian and a few other Montana papers) and then of Duane Hagadone, the owner of a regional media conglomerate.<\/p>\n Along the way, Brouwer looks at the venerable Choteau Acantha, a much-respected little paper that has been publishing in Teton County for 123 years. (One of its editors was A.B. Guthrie’s father, and Guthrie worked there as a boy, in the capacity of printer’s devil, a term so old I’m not even sure what it means.)<\/p>\n The article covers a lot of familiar ground\u2014Facebook is the new small-town newspaper, print is nearly obsolete, etc.\u2014but from a purely Montana perspective. One sidebar<\/a> looks at how Lee Enterprises is trying to beef up its coverage of Eastern Montana, and a second sidebar<\/a> tells of a handful of Montana journalists, including me, who’ve gone off on their into the brave new world of online journalism.<\/p>\n I learned of the story last night … in a Facebook notification, naturally, and since it had been a few weeks since Derek interviewed me over the phone, at first I thought there had been some kind of mistake, or that someone had dug up a story from last year or the year before.<\/p>\n I suppose that was as much a commentary on modern journalism as on the state of my memory, but it was odd. Anyway, there is much to read in those three pieces, all of which I recommend.<\/p>\n One final note: Derek talked to Sally Finneran, the Bigfork Eagle’s last reporter, who relayed this story: “Two months after the Eagle shut down, Finneran, who now works for a wholesale plant nursery, says she took a call on her cellphone from a former source who wanted to pitch her a story.<\/p>\n “‘Have you realized that it’s not a thing anymore?'” she asked him. “You don’t read it, do you?'”<\/p>\n Only two months? Hell, I still run into people occasionally who say to me, more than two years after I quit the Gazette, more than three years after I stopped writing my City Lights column in the Gazette, “I really enjoy your column in the Gazette.”<\/p>\n I want to say, “Enjoy<\/em>? As in present tense<\/em>? I hope you’re kidding!” But I always just say, “Thanks.”
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