Omaha Reader’s End
As the news media continues to change, writers get set adrift. A newspaper industry is in need of advertisers but has largely lost to social media and other internet advertising. News bureaus starved for cash create inflammatory click-bait articles instead of actual journalism. and readership becomes polarized.
Much of the change does not surprise me. KPTM, the local Fox station, drops their news bureau. The Omaha World-Herald keeps on cutting departments and staff and publishes letters to the editor less frequently. But now, The Reader newspaper is shuttering their doors and calling it quits (https://thereader.com/2023/05/30/farewell-for-now-the-reader-to-cease-publishing-by-september/). For me, this kinda hits home.
I met John Heaston, the publisher, decades ago, before The Reader existed. He was running a publication called The Sound. I doubt he recalls me at all. He was nearly always wed to his daily planner. The idea at the time was to outdo the UNO newspaper while covering the local music scene. While they were willing to print a few of my articles, I did not stay around long as they were more interested in the music scene, not opinion pieces, most certainly not controversial ones. The paper he envisioned was not what Francis Mendenhall created with the Nebraska Observer (defunct) back in the same time frame.
Heaston had lots of ambition and reorganized the publication into what became The Reader, focusing on the music scene and often local issues. In many ways, he is undefeatable. If the papers were not completely delivered, you could catch him delivering the papers himself. The paper blossomed and often had more ads instead of printed articles! Yes, the paper leaned left but this pleased the most urban dwellers.
Now, Heaston is calling it quits and appears to blame his declining health, but I think there is more to this. The pandemic did a real number on the entertainment industry, the very industry The Reader appealed to. Everyone was staying home, working from home, learning from home, and even entertaining from home. People who used to meet in person, now meet in zoom-meetings. How do you cover the music scene if people are not going out, and where do you find advertisers as businesses close their doors or choose to advertise on Facebook?
The Reader website and their timely email newsletter provided enough information to keep me interested, but apparently, it is not enough to keep the business rolling. The last time I picked up The Reader, it was a former shadow of its former self compared to years past, now very thin and small. With such a situation, I suspect no one feels able to fill Heaston’s shoes in such trying times, and fear failure in keeping the paper afloat. You have to admit, Heaston is a hard man to replace. I will not only keep Heaston in my prayers but his hard-working staff whose lives are undergoing change.