Blackfoot Valley Dispatch to end print publication after September

2022 has been a rough year here at the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch so when the 'Newspaper Office' sign blew off our building at the end of July, it seemed kind of like an omen.

By now the rumors have probably made the rounds around town that the BVD is closing. A couple of weeks ago that was the plan. But that changed last week. Well, sort of.

After our Sept. 22 issue, the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch will end print publication, but we plan to keep the paper alive on our website blackfootvalleydispatch.com as an online publication.

Erin and I know this won't be a popular decision with our readers who aren't online. Most just prefer a physical paper. Like our decision last year to change to an every-other-week publishing schedule, it is not a decision we've taking lightly, but the writing has been on the wall for quite a while that the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch can't continue as it has for 42 years.

Since at least 2018, maybe earlier, we've faced the triple specters of declining revenue, the community and businesses turning increasingly to social media for advertising and information, and a growing case of plain, old burnout on my part.

During the pandemic in 2020, we planned to implement some new ideas to help keep us afloat. But - to borrow a metaphor I heard recently- when you're stuck in a hamster wheel, it's hard to get out to do something else.

We were able to keep the paper alive, in large part thanks to grants, but the pandemic took its toll as we saw the advertising and information distribution shift even more fully toward social media.

On the flip side of all that, newspapers are becoming increasingly more expensive to print, ship and mail; more so given the higher gas prices and recent inflation. For small, independent newspapers that aren't part of a larger publishing group that can absorb those costs, that does a number on profitability.

Last year we looked at selling the BVD, but at the time interest from potential buyers was minimal. By last September, we realized we couldn't survive financially (or psychologically) as a weekly publication and made the switch to publishing every other week. The change was an effort to gain some breathing room, cut back on costs and get our feet back under us to produce more in-depth stories and a better newspaper. That might have worked, but before we could really find out, we lost my dad to a stroke in January. Three months later, my mother also passed away. Those losses threw me back off balance and firm footing seems even harder to find now.

After learning of the sale of the Seeley Swan Pathfinder to Ponderosa Publications, we thought it was time to dive into how the BVD has been holding up after nearly a year of publishing every other week. Calling the results discouraging would be an understatement. By Erin's estimate, the BVD would have to at double, if not triple, the price of everything from our cover price to subscription and ad rates to be profitable.

When we bought the newspaper in 2012, shutting it down was the furthest thing from our mind, but so was working for minimum wage circa 1980.

After several years struggling to keep the BVD afloat, everything seemed to be pointing in one direction and on Aug. 5 we had made the decision to pull the plug on the newspaper and focus on our antique store, Rusty Relics. But we'd rather keep it alive one way or another, so after some conversations about online publishing, and a bit of research, we realized we were only taping into a part of our website's features. We should be able to maintain and diversify the BVD as an online news source for Lincoln. If all goes well, online publications should give us the flexibility to cover events in a timelier manner, incorporate different types of media and to give us breathing room, without a print deadline always on the horizon.

We are also working with a broker to sell the business. If a serious buyer comes along before our last print issue, we may see about keeping print production going until the sale is final. If not, we'll keep the business on the market, but make the move to fully online publishing where we can continue to provide reporting for Lincoln and the Upper Blackfoot. Furthermore, we can leverage different opportunities for advertisers to get their information out and we can provide a new platform for promoting local events.

And we are keeping the printing side of our business up and running as a local source for raffle tickets, menus, business cards, calendars and more.

At the moment, our plan is to drop the paywall on our website, changing it from subscription to a free site that just requires registration. That'll give our readers more access to our stories and to our advertisers.

It's going to take some time and effort to get everything sorted out but scratching the surface of the digital world may be our best chance to help keep Lincoln informed and carry on with what we and other past BVD publishers have built.

While we appreciate people who say they'd be happy to pay more to keep the BVD in print, you have to understand, it's not only a matter of money.

A newspaper as small as the BVD, even at just eight or ten pages, can be very time consuming for one person to put together. After a decade, it has ground me down. Covering stories, taking photos, writing, and editing stories and pulling it all together into a newspaper layout went from being enjoyable challenges to dreaded chores. (That's not to say I've been entirely on my own. I've had some excellent writers who were willing to work basically for peanuts or less, and Erin has helped take care of many of the ads we had to build.)

But for the first time in a long time, I'm excited to see where this all goes. It's kind of leap of faith for a newspaper as small as the BVD to go fully online, but we'd rather try to keep the BVD going if we can.

At the moment, we can't say what will happen with the BVD in the future. Maybe someone will buy it and keep it in print. Maybe online publication will be just the ticket and we'll find a nice profitable niche. Maybe we'll just keep plugging along and put out special print editions once in a while. Maybe someone will buy it as an online publication and take it places, we can't even imagine. I'm not going to guess, but we sure hope both our readers and our advertisers will stick with us to find out if it's crazy enough to work.

If you like the BVD, we hope you'll continue to support us and come to our website for your local news and information. If you don't care for the BVD, you should stick around too, just to see if it goes all pear shaped on us.