Issues of Local Interest
Introduction from Fern: I grew up in The Bronx and Long Island and moved to Iowa over fifty years ago with my first husband who accepted a job at Iowa State. I loved Iowa right from the start. I really did. I loved the big sky, the lack of traffic, the friendliness of all the people we met.
In the late 90’s, I was a columnist for Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. At that time the newspaper had millions of subscribers and a New York City edition as well.
The column, “Personally Yours,” was mostly about family life: being a parent, a step-parent, having a special needs child, teenagers, taking care of elderly parents. Often I praised Iowa, my adopted state.
I wrote every three weeks and was paid $450 for each column. This addition to teaching salaries enabled my second husband and me to put his two girls through college without incurring any student debt. That gig ended in 2004 when Newsday was tightening its financial belt.
In 2012, the editor of the Ames Tribune called and invited me to lunch. She wanted me to write a column for the local paper. Once a month would be fine. No pressure. And she told me I could write whatever I wanted. Two rules: I couldn’t endorse a political candidate nor could I criticize the newspaper itself.
Ok. Sounded good. Writing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. At the end of the lunch, I asked the final question. I knew the Ames Tribune did not have millions of subscribers like Newsday. Still, I was shocked when she said, “Oh, we weren’t thinking of paying you, Fern.”
I got up from the table and told her (politely, I recall) no thank you. Then went home and ranted to my husband. Are they kidding? The language might have been stronger than that.
I must have ranted for too long, because Joe finally urged me to call the editor back. “We don’t need the money. You’ll like doing it. It could be an opinion column. And, Fern, you do have a lot of opinions.”
I called her back. “Fifty dollars,” I said.
“Deal,” she said.
I wrote a column for the Ames Tribune when Ames, Iowa had a real newspaper. Not that I was Maureen Dowd or anything, but it was freeing to write whatever I wanted. And I did. I wrote about politics: national, state and local. I wrote about guns and the Me Too movement and abortion. I interviewed Steve King and members of the Ames City council. I wrote about the problems of residential zoning in our college town and the heated controversy at the Ames Public Library about a Palestinian film festival. I wrote the backstory about the naming of Jack Trice Stadium. I wrote personal columns about not celebrating Christmas, being a grandparent and getting cancer.
I don’t remember exactly when the column came to an end. The editor who hired me left. Then the editor after that. Then there was no editor at all. I thought: can there be a newspaper without an editor? No one said it was over. I sent out an invoice for fifty dollars for the last column in December of 2019. And I never heard anything after that.
A few weeks ago, Joe wanted to subscribe to the Ames Tribune again. Apparently, it is still being published in paper form and comes in the mail.
So after that discussion, here’s our Substack submission for this week.
Fern: Do you remember The Happy Box? It was a short bit of news in The Ames Tribune. You know, when the Tribune was a real local newspaper instead of … I don’t even know what it is now. TheHappy Box appeared on the newspaper’s front page, a brief squared-off message with the lead: I’m glad I live in mid-Iowa, aren’t you?
Joe: I don’t recall anything called The Happy Box. Maybe it was before I moved to Ames. Was it meant as a joke? Sounds like a fast-food combo-meal.
Fern: Or a dating site. Yes. It was called The Happy Box. Every day there was a short blurb describing disaster in other parts of the world: floods and famines, crime and corruption. But it was bad news that didn’t touch us here in Ames, Iowa. The message was: Shouldn’t we be grateful?
Anyway, The Happy Box didn’t last long. Perhaps there were reader complaints. The messages were smug and downright embarrassing. Yes, there was an earthquake yesterday in Peru, but this certainly was a beautiful, spring day here in mid-Iowa. . .
Joe: I do remember the Ames Tribune Police Reports in the newspaper. My favorite: a report of middle school kids throwing vanilla pudding at passing cars.
Fern: The Happy Box and the local police reports were easy to make fun of. But local news is important. The police reports, the school lunch menus, the community meetings—lets you know what’s going on. Today The Ames Tribune exists as . . . something. But there aren’t real editorials. No letters to the editor. I don’t think there are reporters covering city council and school board meetings.
Joe: And no brick and mortar building where people work. I drove downtown the other day, past the old Ames Tribune building. It was for sale. I’d spent time in that building--a couple hours a day, once or twice a week for over 15 years. There was a taping studio set up in one of the rooms, where I and another volunteer read local newspapers on IRIS, short for Iowa Radio Reading Information Service for the Blind and Print Handicapped. Our readings were broadcast to special receivers available to people who couldn’t read the papers but wanted to know what’s going on in their immediate community.
Fern: The very function of local reporting. And what newspapers did you read?
Joe: Here in Ames we read mostly The Tribune, but also articles from other local newspapers from Boone or Nevada. The national and state news was available via the IRIS Des Moines station.
Fern: Some might argue that people who cannot physically use a newspaper can get their news from tv or radio or podcasts.
Joe: And they can. But not news about issues of very local interest. Like who won the school board elections, or that yesterday’s power outage was the work of a very sorry racoon.
Fern: Or that the pudding being tossed was vanilla and not chocolate or strawberry.
Joe: Exactly! But newspapers have more. Like information about local businesses, letters to the editor and opinion columns written by your neighbors. They have comics.
Fern: Don’t tell me….
Joe: Sure. On a slow news day, my partner and I at IRIS would sometimes read the funny papers aloud.
Fern: There is such a hop-scotch way that we access information now. I read online: The Des Moines Register, The New York Times, The Washington Post, various substacks. But it’s too much. No wonder everyone is being diagnosed with ADD.
And now, my love – you have just signed us up to subscribe to the Ames paper again? Why? It’s not as if you ever read the sports section, which seems to be the bulk of local news. How come?
Joe: Well, there’s occasionally a local story. Something today about the Ames Chamber of Commerce and an Economic Development Commission.
Fern: You read that?
Joe: Well, no. But there’s the puzzles everyday. And frankly, I miss paper. I cook and I paint, both fun pastimes--but very messy, too. When I apply varnish to a finished painting, I like to lay it flat so the varnish doesn’t run down the painting in rivulets. The only table I have for laying a painting flat is--
Fern: Your poker table! OMG! So that’s why I’ve sometimes seen it covered in newspapers.
Joe: Bingo!
Fern: And when you cook—
Joe: Yeah. Try wrapping fish scraps in an iPad. I like newspaper.
I really miss print newspapers. I was a nerdy kid (now a nerdy adult), and I have such fond memories of sitting on the floor to read because my arms were too short to hold them up. We subscribed to The Des Moines Register and swapped every day with our neighbor for The Mason City Globe-Gazette. I moved to Ames in 1995 and subscribed to The Tribune for many years. I, too, loved the police reports and snipped a bunch of great ones. I left Iowa in 2017 and have kept those with me through three additional moves since. Thank you for sparking some great memories. (And some sadness, but buttons come and buttons go.)
This breaks my heart! I SO miss the days when everyone read their local paper and would talk to each other about what they read--from front-page national news, to pudding-tossing hijinks, to what Ann Landers had to say. It was a kind of glue that connected us in so many ways. Newspapers not only kept us informed, but also got us talking to each other about our shared world.
Now we're hop-scotching through our information--as you say (great term for it!). It's great to have tons of options for information, but when none of us are reading much of the same things, we're less connected.
And about your pay, Fern. I was at first insanely JEALOUS (at the Newsday pay!) and then INFURIATED (at the Tribune pay). Do you realize that $450 in mid-90s money is $923 today? ??? ??? Nobody I know makes that kind of money in print journalism. And I certainly never made that kind of money at newspapers (though magazines paid handsomely once upon a time, thank heavens!).
I have a very, very strict policy that I do not write for free. Kudos to you for getting at least $50 from the Tribune.
And I think it's such a strange thing when editors move on and you're kind of left without contacts. You build up these great relationships, and then POOF, they're gone, and nothing's the same. I worked with some editors for 20 years, and loved them--developed personal relationships with them. More recently, editors came and went so often in our ever-changing media landscape, and I hardly ever met any of them in person. There's a loss there, too.
OMG. This comment is a post in itself. Sorry to go on and on, but you really hit a nerve here. Great piece, you two. LOVE IT.