CITY BEAT: TARIFFS WILL DESTROY MANY OF THE NATION’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPERS

  

  AS I’M writing this week’s column President Trump has shifted gears a few times on his recently announced sweeping 25% tariffs so I’m not sure where the tariff status will be by the time you read these comments.
     However, I can affirm, without a doubt, that the 25% tariffs will especially hit community newspapers in small towns across the nation.
     About one-third of all newspapers in the nation have shut down their presses in the past 20 years and closings continue at the rate of 2 1/2 newspapers per week.
     The reason the 25% tariff on Canadian goods is so harmful to newspapers is that 80% of all newsprint used comes from Canada!

     MY “VIEWPOINT” column this week in the print and online editions of the Decatur Tribune is a focus on the reaction to the tariffs by the National Newspaper Association and other newspaper groups who are concerned that the additional cost of newsprint will doom many publications.

     • THIS WEEK’S “Scrapbook” article on pages 4 and 5 of the print and online editions is about some of the products that were advertised in newspapers and magazines in a different era.
     They seem a little ridiculous, and even dangerous, as we look back at them in 2025, but in another era, they were accepted as products that could help those who purchased them.
     I remember when cigarettes were advertised on television back in the days of the black and white tube.
Cigarette brands like Lucky Strike, Marlboro (remember the Marlboro man?), Camel (I’d walk a mile for a Camel) and others were huge advertisers “back in the day”.
     A lot of the programs back then were telecast live and I remember Garry Moore lighting up one of his sponsors’ cigarettes during his quiz show and then, after taking a few puffs, coughing like crazy — as he tried to explain that it wasn’t the cigarette causing him to cough!
     I never had any desire to smoke even though, like all of the other young people of that day, we were exposed to a lot of commercials that promoted smoking — before tv cigarette commercials were banned.
The newspaper and magazine advertisements in this week’s “Scrapbook” were from an era before my time, but they give an indication of the mindset of the public at the time — such as a woman’s place was in the kitchen.
     It is hard to believe that, in looking back, the products advertised were not out of the ordinary for consumers who felt, if they were being advertised, they had to be okay to use.
     Although newspaper and magazine advertising is much different in many respects than it was decades ago, there’s still products being advertised in the electronic media that may one day look to future generations like products advertised years ago look to most of us today who witnessed them when they were commonplace back “in the day”.

     • WHY CHANGE TIME? Many think that daylight saving time, which went into effect last Sunday, was conceived to give farmers an extra hour of sunlight to till their fields, but this is a common misconception, according to an article written by Evan Andrews.

     “In fact, farmers have long been opposed to springing forward and falling back, since it throws off their usual harvesting schedule.
     “The real reasons for daylight saving are based on energy conservation and a desire to match daylight hours to the times when most people are awake. The idea dates back to 1895 when entomologist George Vernon Hudson unsuccessfully proposed an annual two-hour time shift to the Royal Society of New Zealand.
“Ten years later, the British construction magnate William Willett picked up where Hudson left off when he argued that the United Kingdom should adjust their clocks by 80 minutes each spring and fall to give people more time to enjoy daytime recreation. Willett was a tireless advocate of what he called “Summer Time,” but his idea never made it through Parliament.
     “The first real experiments with daylight saving time began during World War I. On April 30, 1916, Germany and Austria implemented a one-hour clock shift to conserve electricity needed for the war effort. The United Kingdom and several other European nations adopted daylight saving shortly after that, and the United States followed suit in 1918. (While Germany and Austria were the first countries to implement daylight savings, the first towns to implement a seasonal time shift were Port Arthur and Fort William, Canada in 1908.)
     “Most Americans only saw the time adjustment as a wartime act, and it was later repealed in 1919. Standard time ruled until 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-instituted daylight saving during World War II. This time, more states continued using daylight saving after the conflict ended, but for decades there was little consistency with regard to its schedule. Finally, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight saving across the country and established its start and end times in April and October (later changed to March and November in 2007).”
     That’s probably more than you wanted to know about Daylight Saving Time.

     • TYPEWRITER ribbons are getting hard to find.
     I know that most people no longer use a typewriter but we have a couple remaining at the office that are used to type mailing labels for the large manila envelopes we often use and to type deposit slips.
     Typewriters and ribbons were once commonplace in Decatur, and across the nation, but with the advent of the computer age, they started fading into history.
     When we started looking to buy some new ribbons for the two Brother typewriters in the office, I wasn’t sure that we were going to find any source —which would have made the typewriters obsolete and useless.
     When they stopped being available locally, we bought them several times at Staples in Forsyth, but, in checking with that store, they no longer had them and no longer carried the Brother typewriter.
     Walmart didn’t have them so I finally went online and found some at Office Depot and ordered a half dozen of them and had them shipped UPS to the office.
     When they arrived last Wednesday I was relieved to see the package.
     The ribbons looked like gold to me!

     • OVER THE years, we’ve had our share of Royal, Smith-Corona and IBM typewriters that everyone used to type out their stories each week which were later converted to huge compugraphic typesetters. I remember the sound of those typesetters running all of that punched computer tape through their systems and it was like music to my ears — and when I didn’t hear one of the machines running, I knew that something was wrong!
     I remember that, when Nick Striglos was getting started in the office equipment and supply business, he had a small storefront on West Prairie where he sold new Royal typewriters — and I bought my first Royal typewriter from him — and used it to type my columns for this newspaper for many years before the computer age made it obsolete.
     One good aspect of typing my columns on that Royal typewriter back then — I never accidently hit the wrong button on the typewriter and wiped out all of the copy — as some have been known to do on a computer from time to time. (ouch!)

     • WHERE’S MY TRIB? As most of you know, the Decatur Tribune not only is mailed to local residents but to subscribers all over the nation, each week.
     We work hard to meet all of our deadlines and always truck the mail edition and its thousands and thousands of copies, to the Mound Road Post Office around noon every Wednesday without fail — except when a holiday falls on Wednesday and we mail a day before, or a day after, the holiday.
     Otherwise, there has only been one regular Wednesday in 55+ years the Trib hasn’t been delivered to the post office at the usual time. (That was because of a snowstorm many years ago that shut down all of the roads in and around Decatur.)
     The personnel at the Mound Road facility are always great in making sure the Trib is on its way very soon after all of the sorted copies are unloaded.
     Where some of them go once they leave that facility is a matter of increasing frustration for me — because I want all of our mail subscribers to receive their copy of that week’s Trib in a timely manner.
     Although about all of our mail subscribers receive each week’s edition in a timely fashion, I hear from a few subscribers who wonder what the post office did with their Trib last week.
     Post offices in other communities across Central Illinois where we also have many subscribers deliver what they receive from the USPS distribution centers. The few Tribs that are delayed in delivery can be traced back to a USPS distribution center where they were not expedited in a timely fashion.
     I also want to emphasize as I usually do, that it’s not the fault of the mail carriers who work hard to deliver the mail and we’ve always had great carriers bringing mail to our office.
     Those distribution facilities need to get their act together before the USPS doesn’t have any customers and all mail subscribers to newspapers don’t have any newspapers.
     Thanks to all of you for your patience and kindness. You know that we do everything we can on our end to get the Tribune to you as soon as possible.
     It’s what happens to a few of them after they leave the Mound Road Post Office in Decatur that needs to be addressed.

     • NO. 1 TOPIC? What do people talk to me about more often than any other subject I’ve written about?
     Easy answer. It seems that nearly everybody I talk with has experienced first-hand the crazy, reckless driving of other motorists on area streets and roads!
     They often relate how close they came to being hit by a vehicle whose driver disobeyed traffic signs and lights.
Drive carefully and be alert for those drivers who do not practice safe driving. They drive among us.

     • I JOIN Brian Byers on WSOY’s Byers & Co., every Thursday morning at 7:00 for the City Hall Insider — something we’ve done for 23 years!

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