Tamarack River Ghost (28 page)

Josh thought about doing an article on boat safety, the perils of not wearing a life vest while boating, and the even greater risks of drinking while boating. He wondered if such an article would fit the editorial model his new boss had laid out for
Farm Country News
.

Natalie checked licenses and catches all around the pond, with Josh tagging along behind, observing but not saying anything. When they returned to her truck, she offered, “You ready for breakfast? I’m buying.”

They drove to the Lone Pine and feasted on eggs and flapjacks and drank more coffee.

“Another opening morning of fishing season in the record book,” said Natalie.

By late May, the online version of
Farm Country News
, with its new editorial approach, was humming along. So far there had been some, but not much, grumbling about paying to have something in the newspaper. Payment rates varied. If someone wanted something to appear on the home page, the cost was twenty-five cents per word. Everything else was a flat fifteen cents a word, with no limit on the number of words.

The paper was divided into several sections so people viewing could easily find material that interested them: “Front Page,” “Latest Farm News,” “New Ways for New Days,” “Tales from an Earlier Time,” “Market Reports,” “Country Poetry.”

Material poured in, a bit of a surprise for Josh, who was more than a little skeptical of how the former readers of the print version of
Farm Country News
would take to the electronic version. Josh was well aware that now, with the electronic version, people were reading their newspaper on a vast array of devices, from their cell phones, computers, iPads, and Kindles. The paper had received a dozen or so letters lamenting the loss of the print newspaper that had been a mainstay in rural homes for nearly 150 years. But it received an equal number of, if not even more, e-mail letters applauding it for “looking to the future and becoming a part of it,” as one reader commented.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that the newspaper was entirely free, both online and its monthly print versions. And further, at first glance it appeared that the paper included absolutely no advertising, not one display ad and no pages of classified ads. Some people didn’t realize that the advertising in the paper was disguised as news stories. And none, except for those
who read carefully, could at first glance tell the difference between a “real” story and a “story ad,” as Josh began calling them. He had a serious problem with the approach; it clearly violated his sense of journalistic integrity—but for the time being, he chose not to bring the issue up with his boss.

Josh hired two new staff members; each had once been a member of either the
Capital Times
or the
Wisconsin State Journal
staffs in Madison. The masthead for
Farm Country News
read:

Every article that appeared in the newspaper carried a byline, and with the many and varied contributions, it appeared at first glance that
Farm Country News
had an enormous staff. Few knew that the actual staff consisted of essentially only four people, plus a couple of additional persons who took care of the computer work.

It was Josh’s idea to include a “Country Poetry” section. He was hoping that perhaps M.D. would see fit to submit some more material. He’d come to like this person’s blunt, in-your-face take on matters. M.D. had no love for the big hog operation coming to Ames County, that was for sure. Josh wondered if he had anything more to say on the question.

Some poetry did arrive; at least those sending it in called it poetry. Because the writers had included checks and sometimes even cash, with word counts carefully calculated, he had no reason to turn anything down, no matter what its quality. Besides, he reasoned, who knows what makes good poetry, anyway? He’d always placed poetry in the same category as paintings. He knew what he liked, and he knew what he didn’t; he believed the same held for poetry. During the first week, he included three poems, expecting to hear some word from his boss about such drivel, but he didn’t. A dollar is a dollar, no matter whether wrapped around poor poetry or an important news story.

By George

Not much to it, but George had included the required fifteen cents a word, even counting “By George.” From the nature of the handwriting, he suspected George must be an elementary school student. But the paper was wide open to submissions, no matter the writer’s age. He suspected about the only reason he had for turning someone down was profanity—at least that was the guideline he was using.

A second poem was a bit more intriguing:

By JoAnn Clausen

But when two ads disguised as stories arrived on his desk, he knew he must stand up for what he believed.

Fritz’s hardware store in Willow River e-mailed in a story describing its new lawnmower. “We have just received a new battery-operated mower. One overnight charge is enough to mow a good-sized town lawn, with the muss and fuss of handling gasoline a memory left in the past, and there’s
no trouble at all in starting the machine. Push the ‘on’ button, and the machine comes to life with a silent purr that means business.” The article went on at length, describing the virtues of the mower, making in-depth comparisons to the gasoline-powered machines that customers had long been accustomed to using.

John Deere sent a long story describing its new lineup of tractors for the smaller “hobby farmer.” “No matter the size of your acreage, we have the tractor for you,” the article concluded.

With copies of the two stories in hand, Josh walked down the hall to his boss’s office, where the door was always closed. He knocked.

“Enter.”

Josh opened the door and found Lexington staring at a computer screen, his big desk absolutely devoid of any paper.

“What can I do for you, Josh? Everything going okay? Lots of material pouring in, just as I predicted.”

“Got these two items this morning,” said Josh. He put them on Lexington’s desk.

“Did the money come in with the stories?”

“It did.”

“So, what’s the problem?” asked Lexington.

Josh hesitated for a moment. “These are not stories; these are ads.”

“So?”

“We shouldn’t be disguising ads as news stories; it’s just not right. It’s deceiving, and it will tarnish our reputation.”

“Whoa, there, Josh. Calm down. Haven’t you been listening to me? This is the new journalism. People don’t know the difference between an ad and a story, and, frankly, most of them don’t care.”

“It’s our job to be honest with people. Not calling this sort of material advertising is dishonest.”

“Are you finished?”

“I am.”

“Then get back to work. We’ve got a newspaper to run.”

Josh returned to his office, angry at the response he’d gotten from his boss and perplexed by how he should proceed. Lexington was challenging
everything he had learned about ethics and responsible journalism. He knew the exchange he’d just had was likely the first of more such confrontations. He turned to some of the other materials the paper had been receiving.

He was surprised at the number of articles he received that fit within the “Tales from an Earlier Year” section of the paper. Every week, a half dozen or so stories would arrive from around the country, some by e-mail, some by regular mail. Just this week he’d gotten an e-mail submission from what appeared to be a retired farmer in Minnesota, recounting what farm life was like when he was a boy and how bears would regularly raid the hog pen at night. In considerable detail, the farmer told how he would sit up all night with a 12-gauge shotgun in his lap, waiting for a marauding bear to come by.

A farmwoman from Iowa wrote about May baskets and how they made the small paper baskets, filled with spring flowers—violets and dandelions mostly—at the country school, then would walk through the neighborhood with them on warm May nights and quietly hang them on friends’ doorknobs and yell “May basket!” Their friends were then supposed to chase after the basket-giver, trying to catch her.

A farmer from Portage County, Wisconsin, sent in a story about how when he was a kid his family planted up to twenty acres of potatoes with a hand-operated potato planter. He wrote how he would drop a piece of seed potato into the top of the device; push the planter into the soft ground; push it forward so the seed potato would escape into the hole; and then pull the planter out of the ground, making a “clop” sound when the bottom closed. “There was a rhythm to potato planting, a melodic sound made when a couple of men planted potatoes side by side, working their way across the potato field, following the long marks etched in the soft soil, which were earlier made by a horse-drawn marker. On a quiet day, the sound of the ‘clop,’ ‘clop,’ when the planter closed, could be heard for some considerable distance.”

Lawrence Lexington (never Larry, always Lawrence) was elated at the new venture’s success. The paper staff met each day to discuss what it would include on the home page and what stories seemed to merit inclusion in
the monthly print edition—so far they had published just one print edition; all the rest had been online. The issue of what was an ad and what was a news story did not come up.

At one of these staff meetings, Josh asked, “Shouldn’t we be including more photos? Shouldn’t we include photos that go beyond what a company sends us with its story—photos of new tractors, pictures of new lawn mowers, those kinds of photos?”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“Well, let’s say I do a story about something I find interesting—a feature story about a farm family, for example. Photos would make the story come alive; I could even include some video.”

“Sure. I suggest you take your camera along when you’re doing a story like that. Snap some photos and include them with your story. But another point: I’m sure you realize we don’t want to include many of these ‘feature stories,’ as you call them. We don’t make any money on them. Not a nickel. And besides, they take up some of your valuable time, Josh. I’m sure you understand that.”

Josh didn’t respond. He wanted to ask what Lexington thought about another story on the new hog facility being built in the Tamarack River Valley, a story that he, Josh, would write following his best journalist instincts, but he thought this was not the time to ask. And he thought,
Why should I ask, anyway? After all, I am the managing editor; shouldn’t I be able to make decisions about stories like this without having to check with the publisher?

The following Monday, Josh grabbed his point-and-shoot digital camera, tape recorder, and notepad and headed out to the former golf course destined to become one of Ames County’s largest agricultural enterprises, if not the largest. He had a meeting set up with Ed Clark, Nathan West’s regional representative, who agreed to give him a tour of the facility. They had agreed to meet at one of the former condo buildings that NWI had converted into offices.

As Josh drove west from Willow River, through the vegetable-growing area of Ames County where many hundreds of acres of potatoes had already been planted, and where farmers were hustling to get their seed corn into
the ground, he thought about all that had happened in the past few weeks. He hadn’t yet figured out his new boss; he was surely not at all like Bert Schmid. “Look for the story behind the story” was how Bert described good journalism. Josh missed Bert, missed him more than he thought he would. Bert had been Josh’s mentor, and even though he’d gotten a good basic education in journalism at the University of Wisconsin, he had learned many of the nuances of writing from Bert—not a great writer himself, but he knew great writing when he saw it and pushed his reporters to go the extra mile with their stories.

Josh was beginning to strongly question whether this new model of journalism, with no advertising and everyone, individuals and corporations, paying by the word to see their material in print, was the future. He had to admit that the paper—they had to come up with new language for what they were doing, as little paper was used, only one print edition a month, which didn’t amount to much—was making a profit. Of course, there was little overhead, a tiny staff, and few press and paper costs. Josh, still feeling a lot of Bert’s influence, wondered why people seemed to enjoy seeing their words on an electronic screen. Josh still liked to hold a newspaper with two hands and see black words on white paper, without batteries or an electrical cord.

But most important, he worried whether
Farm Country News
could maintain its reputation as the hard-hitting, get-at-the-facts-and-tell-the-story paper that it had been. So far, in Josh’s estimation, the new paper had mostly published “soft” material, feature stories, a little poetry, and advertising that was supposed to be hidden in a story. Nothing that would approach in-depth journalism. Josh had agreed with Bert that Nathan West could be such a story, which was why he had driven out to the Tamarack River Valley on this warm May morning.

As a good journalist, Josh wanted to present all sides of the story, even though earth was being moved, buildings were being built, and soon thousands of pigs would be housed in what had been a tranquil river valley. Josh knew that many people were not at all pleased with what was happening; they liked the valley as it had been and weren’t pleased with the idea of thousands of smelly pigs as their neighbors.