BVD: The long goodbye

Readers of the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch have probably noticed that for several months our stories and updates have been pretty hit or miss – mostly miss. For anyone wondering about the future of Lincoln's only local news, I'll be blunt: the BVD's future with us is short.

We will continue with our printing business, but unless we can find someone to take over the news business and website in the next few weeks, we anticipate closing down the BVD around the end of January. We will be putting out feelers in the hope we can find someone interested in keeping the BVD alive, or at least in a digital stasis online. If something works out, we'll let you know.

I feel horrible about this decision, but it's one I should have made back in 2022 when we stopped our print publication. I seriously considered shutting it all down then, but felt a responsibility to keep the community informed if I could. And to be honest, too much of my identity was wrapped up in being the local "news guy."

The simplest reason for this decision is we can no longer afford to keep paying for the news website, and I no longer have the drive to keep it updated.

The lifeblood of a news organization isn't actually news, it's traditionally been advertising income. Despite our efforts to improve the publication, expand our readership and maintain a high level of quality – which I think we did well for many years – we've always had a hell of a time attracting or keeping enough advertisers. During most of our time with the BVD, the business hasn't been particularly profitable, and we never made enough to put someone on payroll.

The market for local news also evolved in ways we didn't anticipate and weren't able tokeep up with. The COVID-19 pandemic in particular saw a major shift locally as more and more people turned to sites like Lincoln Live for advertising and local information (accurate or not).

But it's about more than just money. Instead of being something I truly enjoyed, the BVD became a grind. I've felt burned out for quite some time now, and events in the last couple of years have extinguished what motivation I had left. This story alone has taken me five months to write. I've never been a fast writer, but in the last couple years my typing skills seem to have gotten worse and I've found myself second-guessing and double-checking basic facts. Even updating the website has become a depressing reminder that the BVD isn't really a local news source anymore.

That's one of the perils of basically being a one-person operation. When that one person flames out, it derails the whole damn thing.

Assuming someone doesn't take over the BVD, we plan to maintain the BVD Facebook page to provide updates or news releases important to the community, when or if we get them. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," I guess. But honestly, for the past couple years most of that is all over Facebook before we ever see or hear about any of it.

There remains plenty of local news here that needs to be reported. During 2024 in particular, I wanted to cover several important stories: the Lincoln Sewer District mismanagement during the past few years that's currently under investigation; leadership issues at Lincoln School; construction of the new Dalton Mountain Road Bridge; development of the local Veteran's Association; retirement of Mark the UPS guy and many others. But wanting to cover stories and being able to do so are two distinctly different things in the face of burn out.

I wouldn't feel quite as bad about this decision if the regional dailies still covered Lincoln somewhat regularly. In the past, people could turn to the newspapers in Helena, Missoula or Great Falls for at least some Lincoln news, but today those papers are a mere shadow of what they once were, and barely cover their own cities.

When Erin and I bought the BVD we had every intention of building it up to cover the wider region, growing readership, advertisers and staff along the way. But while we HAD plans, we didn't MAKE plans, which is to say we never really laid out a roadmap for how we were going to expand the business like we wanted. Along the way we had part-time or volunteer writers like Hope, Connie, Tammy, Kate and Lee to help us out, but we never got to the point where we could hire them as staff and they've understandably moved on to other priorities.

While I feel like we've let the community down in general, I feel much worse about letting down the readers and advertisers who have supported us and stuck with us. I am truly grateful and hope you can understand.

I'm not sure how many of our subscribers are left since we stopped printing (or since I've neglected our website so badly) but they've been pretty awesome during our time running the BVD. They've always been supportive and in a lot of ways are one of the main reasons we kept at it for as long as we could. I hear often (sometimes maybe a little too often) how much they miss the printed newspaper. Believe me, I understand. We miss it as well.

If we don't find someone to take on the BVD news business, maybe one day we'll figure out a way to bring it back in some form. But into the foreseeable future, we're not the ones to do that.

If we do find someone willing to take on the BVD and try to make a go of it, I'd be glad to hand it off and help them as much as possible.

BVD

The first issue of the BVD,

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So, that covers the basics. I should stop here, and you can if you like. However, we've gotten to the point of shutting down a business that's been a Lincoln staple for 44 years and that deserves more context, even though it's a long, personal and kind of embarrassing story.

I'm not making excuses nor looking for sympathy. We've made mistakes. This is honestly to explain to myself, as much as anyone, how and why we've gotten to the point of calling it quits. So why publish it? I guess you can call it catharsis.

When we bought the BVD in 2012, small local newspapers were still pretty immune to the toll the internet was taking on larger newspapers, and we had high hopes. I was a year out from a deployment to Iraq where my unit produced a weekly newsletter for Camp Victory. I was very confident we'd build the BVD into something special and run it for years to come.

What we didn't foresee at the time was that social media sites like Facebook would become such local information juggernauts. And we didn't do a good job of adapting as that became clear.

From a production standpoint, the Dispatch has mostly been a one-person enterprise since we bought it. I've been publisher, editor, lead writer, photographer, layout and design, graphic artist and even paper boy. Meanwhile Erin handled bookkeeping, billing and managed the business end of the operation. She also handled the job of getting the printed newspaper ready for distribution, with volunteer help from Mike and Renee Campbell.

For a few years I took pride in putting in working so many hours, wearing so many hats. After a while, though, that wore me down, and we never could afford to hire anyone full-time to help out.

The first signs of serious burn out probably began five or six years ago. It became increasingly demoralizing to be at local meetings, only to hear people ask why they hadn't heard about a subject I'd covered in detail in the BVD. I suppose I took that too personally.

I think the unexpected death of Bill Frisbee about the same time also had an impact. Despite not always seeing eye-to-eye, he became a friend and was one of the few people in Lincoln with whom I could just BS and vent some frustrations.

Nevertheless, the belief that local news and providing a "first draft of history" is important kept me going. It also helped that our readers seemed to appreciate what we were doing, and that the BVD was winning awards through the Montana Newspaper Association's annual newspaper contest.

BVD

The front page from Oct. 10, 2014 with the opening of Sculpture in the Wild.

Income remained an issue. Every week that we had enough ads to cover the cost of printing the paper was considered a win, as long as I didn't ask Erin about our bottom line. Plus, we still had the printing business and Rusty Relics to help keep everything more or less afloat.

For several years I wanted to blame some of the local businesses for not supporting us (and themselves) through advertising. The truth is there were a lot that did, but we never really put in the work we should have to attract or keep them. I was busy trying to get the paper out every week and never got a handle on it, while Erin was busy juggling the myriad jobs and responsibilities she had. Without enough income for the BVD to hire any staff we found ourselves in a classic Catch-22: we needed to hire someone to help bring in more revenue, but since we couldn't bring in more revenue, we couldn't afford hire anyone.

Despite the challenges, things seemed to be looking up in 2019. It felt like both the paper and the community were heading in a good direction.

BVD

The front page of the BVD from Sept. 11, 2019, with the final load of waste from the Upper Blackfoot Mining Complex.

Then along came COVID. It didn't seem like it at first but 2020 was really the beginning of the end for the BVD.

We made some changes to cut costs and there was quite a bit of investment in COVID-related advertising, plus it was an election year so we had campaign ads. We redesigned the newspaper to be a full broad sheet, a proper, old-school format that was pretty popular with our readers and helped the newspaper feel rejuvenated. Things were also looking decent financially, even if everything else in the country seemed to have been flipped upside down.

But that feeling of burn out hadn't gone away. Every week I'd be at my desk at about three in the morning, having panic attacks trying to finish stories and the layout for a 7 a.m. deadline I never seemed to meet. There was a lot going on and it was hard to provide timely updates in a weekly newspaper, particulalry as more people seemed to be relying on Facebook pages like Lincoln Live for local information and "free" advertising. It proved hard to compete with free. By the end of that year, running a newspaper began to feel increasingly pointless, even though we still had readers who relied on us.

In 2021, political and COVID-related advertising dried up and things started looking pretty grim. That October we decided to switch to publishing every other week. I hoped it would help our bottom line and give me both breathing room and time to work on priorities like family, which I'd pushed to the back burner for too long. I also had planned to look into new ways to bring in revenue.

Then came 2022.

2022 just ... sucked.

The new year started with a phone call from my sister Kathy in Missoula. My father had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital. He'd suffered minor strokes before and recovered, but this one was serious. For a couple days it seemed he might be OK. He came around and was grouchy, particulalry about being in the hospital - a place I think he hated. That didn't last long. The damage was too severe. Seeing my dad – who'd spent most of his life outdoors, trapping, hunting and logging – stuck in a hospital bed, struggling to breathe while his body shut down, messed with me more that I knew. He died early in the morning Jan. 12.

After his death, my brother, sister and I turned to making sure our mom would be taken care of. She'd survived colon cancer and a brain tumor, but had a lot of health issues and was very dependent on my dad. Most of that responsibility fell to my sister, who became her primary caregiver.

My mother seemed to do quite well for a couple months. But the loss of my father must have been too much. In April her health took a turn for the worse. I was there with my sister on April 21 when she passed away at home. While unexpected, Mom's death was less surprising than Dad's. We had a feeling she wouldn't survive long without him, but thought we'd have more time than we did.The one saving grace from losing both my parents within months of one another is that my brother, sister and I have spent more time together than we have in years.

My parents were in their 80s, so logically I knew they weren't long for the world, but I still wound up in a deep melancholy. And things began to unravel further.

Our new bi-weekly schedule helped me continue to cover stories after a fashion, but whatever enthusiasm I had left for it was evaporating. Covering stories and writing became a chore that I kept putting off. Even my love of photography waned. For nearly 30 years I carried a camera bag almost every day. Even now I barely pick it up.

In fall of 2022, we ended print production of the BVD entirely. The cost of printing and shipping had skyrocketed. We'd been looking for a buyer for the newspaper business but nothing panned out, and both our revenue and my motivation were in the toilet. We should have pulled the plug entirely. But I was too obstinate and thought I could make a go of it online. Turns out I couldn't.

BVD

The final print issue of the BVD

At the start of 2023, I really expected to get back into the swing of things, but with no set deadline – even one I always missed – that didn't happen. Without a newspaper to design, I was left with the one thing I was having the hardest time with: writing.

At the same time, the Lincoln Master Plan was also nearing finalization. I'd written several stories explaining the need for the plan and its goals, and was part of the steering committee for its development, so I was pretty invested in it.

A community meeting that March unveiled the plan. I intended to write about it, but somehow never got to it. I was still in a deep malaise and the whole Master Plan process seemed to highlight the idea that the BVD was a failing business.

Despite the stories I'd written, the blowback against the Master Plan had been fierce. Some people claimed they'd never heard anything about it. Others claimed it was some ludicrous plan to "turn Lincoln into Whitefish." That rumor in particular was due in part to a stupid concept illustration I made the mistake of publishing back in early 2020.

Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710 that "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after..." The BVD hadn't limped fast enough or far enough. Worse, that falsehoods apparently originated with us.

The concept illustration that spawned a thousand rumors.

Public meetings for input and updates helped allay some of the rumors, but by the time the plan was done the tidal wave of bad information and crap that emerged on Facebook became the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.

The summer of 2023 also saw us close down Rusty Relics for longer than expected. A plan to add on to our building evolved into a total rebuild and we had to tear down the original building we were in, the old Mom's Drive Inn building. That was a necessary but difficult choice. In the end, re-opening Rusty Relics took the better part of a year, and the ongoing uncertainty and stress about it added to the feeling that everything was coming undone.

To help make ends meet while the store was closed, Erin took on another full time job. Meanwhile I found myself stuck in liminal space, a deeply unsettling place of transition. I didn't know how to leave behind something I worked so hard for, but no longer have the capacity to do. That's an uncomfortable place to be at 56 years old

In the last few months, we've gotten Rusty Relics open again. That and our printing business has necessarily been my main focus. I know we have to put the BVD behind us for the health of our family and for our businesses that actually produce an income, but part of me is still fighting with it. I hope we find someone willing to take the BVD on to keep it going.

For the record, I still believe the Master Plan is one of the most important plans created for the future revitalization of Lincoln, despite feeling we maybe caved a little too much to the vocal critics who don't actually have to earn a living or run a business here. For anyone interested, it's still moving forward at a slow pace. I don't want to see it become just one more in the long list of plans to help Lincoln that never saw results.

I intend to keep working for Lincoln. If I can get my head screwed back on straight, I'll put more energy toward the Upper Blackfoot Valley Historical Society. This area has a lot of history and there's still a lot that needs to be done with it

So, there you have it, for what it's worth There was a lot we didn't see coming and a lot we didn't respond to as well as we should have, and is the one story I never wanted to write ... for a lot of reasons.

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