PORT ANGELES — A panel of journalists reflected on the history of the local news media and made predictions about the future of the industry last week.
Bill Lindstrom, author of the book “Strait Press: A History Of News Media On The North Olympic Peninsula,” was featured with other veteran journalists in two panel discussions at Peninsula College on Thursday.
More than 100 students and community members attended the first presentation in the college’s Little Theater. Twenty-eight witnessed the evening talk, part of the Peninsula College Studium Generale series.
The well-researched, 617-page book explains how the news media covered the events that shaped the region.
“What I really wanted to talk about in the book was history,” Lindstrom said.
“Every city on the Peninsula is summarized in this book, sometimes not even summarized, but detailed.”
Copies of “Strait Press” sit on a table for purchase during Thursday’s Studium Generale presentation at Peninsula College. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
Lindstrom, 76, was a working reporter and editor for more than 50 years. He was a Peninsula Daily News news editor from 1999 to 2001 and retired as city editor from The Daily World in Aberdeen in 2013.
Lindstrom was joined on stage in the early panel by retired Peninsula College journalism instructor Robbie Mantooth, former Newsradio KONP owner and host Jim MacDonald and former PDN publishers Frank Ducceschi and John Brewer.
Longtime West End photographer and author Lonnie Archibald replaced Mantooth for the second presentation.
The presentations were moderated by former Sequim Gazette publisher Brown M. Maloney, who owns KONP’s parent company, Radio Pacific, and commissioned Lindstrom’s book.
Brewer, who retired as publisher and editor of the PDN, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum in 2015, predicted print newspapers will be around for “just a few more years” before switching to an online-only format.
“It’s a tragic thing,” Brewer said.
“Print is going away. It will be gone. I don’t know exactly how soon, but it will be.
“Hopefully it will be a rosy future electronically of some kind coming up,” Brewer added.
Whether print or radio, MacDonald said the media industry has become “pretty complicated” in an age of social media.
“The internet has made it so that everybody’s a reporter and everybody’s got a platform,” said MacDonald, a KONP announcer who became a co-owner of the Port Angeles radio station in 1983.
“Most of the time you have no idea whether what you’re reading on there is factual or not. The internet and social media has just changed everything.”
News or opinion
Mantooth, who became the first full-time advisor of the student-produced Peninsula College Buccaneer in 1983, said the onus falls on media consumers to differentiate news from opinion.
“Credibility is the most important thing,” Mantooth said.
“Media intelligence and education is another thing that is increasingly important.”
Ducceschi, who became PDN publisher in 1981, agreed that consumers will have a “lot to say” about the future of the industry.
“As long as people value honest-to-God journalism and make that what they want, then you have a chance to control what’s going to happen, whether it’s going to be robots delivering it or whether it’s going to be internet or whether its going to be skywriters,” Ducceschi said.
“If you want a good news media, you really have to demand it.”
Archibald, whose photographs have appeared in the Forks Forum and PDN for decades, said “Strait Press” contains a “lot of detail” and a “lot of history” about the region.
“I’m just really happy with this book,” Archibald said.
“Bill did a good job on it.”
Lindstrom interviewed 62 sources and made 52 trips from Aberdeen to the state archives in Olympia to pore over microfilm in his research of 84 newspapers that existed on the North Olympic Peninsula from 1859 to the present.
He eventually moved to the state capital and made 13 trips to the North Olympic Peninsula to complete the 3 1/2 year project.
“I have tried to write this book with an infusion of anecdotes that added humor, hopefully making it interesting for anyone on the Olympic Peninsula, not just those involved in the news media,” Lindstrom wrote in an introduction to the book.
“Strait Press” is available for $42.99 in hardcover and $28.99 in paperback at Port Book and News, Odyssey Bookshop, KONP, KSQM and Sequim Museum & Arts.
It also is available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
No censorship
While overseeing the college newspaper, Mantooth said she gave her students the latitude to make their own journalistic decisions.
At times, Mantooth felt her career was in jeopardy because she “insisted that the students must not be censored.”
“A lot of colleges have just chosen not to have student newspapers,” said Mantooth, who retired in 2000.
“So they’ve lost a big opportunity to teach people not only all of the skills related to media work, but those that are so important for a democracy.”
Students continue to publish the award-winning Buccaneer under the tutelage of associate professor of journalism Rich Riski.
The panelists shared examples of memorable stories they covered in their careers, from tragic events to the capture of terrorist Ahmed Ressam on the streets of Port Angeles in 1999.
MacDonald recalled the phone call he received from a listener who reported that the Hood Canal Bridge had sunk in 1979.
“I’m thinking, yeah right,” MacDonald said.
“Needless to say, we didn’t go on the air with that right away, but we did follow up on it very quickly, and sure enough, it went down.”
The bridge was destroyed in a windstorm on Feb. 13, 1979.
Audience members peppered the speakers with questions about the news media and its future.
Brewer said print newspapers are struggling to cover the costs of ink and distribution while paid subscriptions continue to decline.
“A lot of communities used to have a newspaper published six or seven days a week, and now publish maybe three print versions and the rest of the time it’s all online,” Brewer said.
Print journalism
Brewer, who spent five decades in journalism and worked at the The New York Times before becoming PDN editor and publisher in 1998, said print journalism is a “tremendous vehicle” for news and advertising.
“You look at a newspaper page, there’s several stories, maybe stories you didn’t realize even happened,” Brewer said.
“It gets you out of that silo that you have electronically.”
Maloney, who serves on the board of the McClatchy Company, a major newspaper chain founded by his family in 1857, said advertising is measured by a combination of print subscriptions and web traffic.
“Between the print and between online, there’s a lot of eyeballs, including the younger generation, that are sending articles, reading things, sharing things, even if we are taking it in bits and pieces,” Maloney said.
“Print revenue is declining, but what people don’t see is they don’t see that digital is increasing.”
Advertising revenue is now split among the print and digital platforms, Maloney said.
“Newspapers still are the primary source of trusted local news, and we have that franchise, and if you’re in any way conscientious about that and understand that, you’re going to fight to keep that,” Maloney said.
”And I believe that trusted news sources will come to be embraced sooner than later, local, nationally and otherwise, but it’s going to still be a hell of a rocky road.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
