Roger sent a letter to the Union Herald criticizing the choice of The Record and its publisher's ties to Harold Hamilton. Roger's just one of many such letter writers... I have written, Mel Aanerud wrote, as did Jim Abeler and another good acquaintance, Dee Ann Christensen. So, if you like to read about one particular right-wing view of the world, The Watchdog is the place for you.
This past week, the Union Herald published a letter from a Scott Cords of Ramsey, who responded to my own letter criticizing the choice of The Record. I published that in this blog recently. Here's from Cords' letter:
Different view on county’s public notice decision
To the Editor:
In response to Wes Volkevant’s March 6th letter, I would like to pose a different view of the situation. The public notices, over which there has been so much wailing and gnashing of teeth, are available online through the Anoka County Record’s website (www.anokacountyrecord.com) as well as current paper copies available at government centers and public libraries in Anoka County.
From the information I was able to gather, the cost to publish the information in the Anoka County Record’s publication is 40 percent of the cost bid by the ABC Newspapers.
On the surface, a pure cost basis analysis shows it was a good decision. The bidding process was fair and open. I would suggest that it was not only a good decision, but the County Board’s duty to change publishers in the interest of taxpayers.
On the topic of visibility, Anoka County has somewhere over 123,400 households. With recent circulation of 4,900, the ABC Newspapers covers 3.7 percent of the households in the county. Hardly the significant coverage Mr. Volkevant tries to describe. Anybody with some level of intellectual honesty should be able to admit that a vast percentage of those with significant interest in the public notices in question are likely willing and able to look elsewhere. I would submit that those really interested in such data does not wait for it to be published in paper format and delivered to their door.
I do support the Anoka County Board’s decision to change publishers and would say that it’s a waste of tax money to require paper publication of such data period. Since the law requires printing it, a 60 percent savings gets my support. Unless of course, Mr. Volkevant’s position is to spend more than twice the money for a publication that does not reach a meaningful percentage of the households in Anoka County. More than doubling the spending with no appreciable gain in value is the conflict of interest I see.
Scott Cords
Ramsey
I've written a reply to Mr. Cords, which should run sometime in April....
To the Editor:
I appreciate Scott Corbs providing an explanation of why the County
Board’s action switching publications to The Record had merit in terms
of cost and circulation. As Mr. Corbs might
expect, I disagree, and have reason to believe the County Board shouldn’t have simply
chosen the less expensive option.
I believe County Board members are elected to spend taxpayer money –
wisely, fairly, and appropriately. I do
not believe their focus should be merely to save us money and cut corners.
And, the County Board cut corners in taking an action that “saves
taxpayer money” at the expense of tradition.
Print newspapers are traditional, but more importantly, state law says
such notices are printed in newspapers.
There is protection in the printed word, which cannot be changed or
erased at the press of keystrokes.
Recall that The Record barely exceeds the 400 printed copies (about
0.3% of County households) required to be “legal.” By comparison, the UnionHerald has a
circulation 10 times that number – nearly 5000 households. On a percentage basis that is like the Pioneer
Press’s weekday circulation compared to State households.
That The Record could come in so much cheaper, is hardly
surprising when considering its tiny staff publishes a free newspaper and mainly
an online content, versus a newspaper that incurs considerably greater expense
to be published. Apparently, a main
source of funding for this newspaper is Harold Hamilton, the wealthy benefactor
from Fridley, where The Record maintains its small office at his company. Hamilton’s “Watchdog” articles appear
regularly in The Record as “paid advertisements,” and he finances key
Republicans in Anoka County – County Board members and area legislators. He has been successful, but his control comes
at a cost to others.
Reading those notices in The Record forces one to read Hamilton’s
propaganda tabloid. In addition to the
“Watchdog”, the content regularly bashes DFLers and reprints elected Republicans’
press releases. For us Democrats to go
to this partisan Republican ‘newsletter’ to read notices would be like asking Mr.
Hamilton to have to watch MSNBC every night for his daily news. Unimaginable.
Wes Volkenant
Andover
One of my favorite bloggers also lives in Ramsey, like Mr. Cords. But Developers are Crabgrass by Eric Zaetsch is from a very different end of the political spectrum - up where I hang out. Eric wrote a very strong piece this weekend:
Commercial reasonableness has a place in analysis of when competition might cross over to commercial predation. Pricing below cost to injure a competitior.
Here was one of my favorite sections....
"Wrongly so, the man implies. He defines one instance of something he alleges Murray was saying with an outright definitive "It's false" published factual assertion - by Kysylyczyn. Related to purported mention of possible investigations during discussion/negotiations which may have involved a possible "due diligence" aspect of public officials meeeting due diligence enquiry norms (instances outside of Nowthen in contexts apart from decision by Nowthen's council and/or administration in designating its official newspaper).
___________FURTHER UPDATE____________
To my knowledge, there is no definitive Kysylyczyn public statement on record of whether he's ever bought any printing ink or newsprint. And if so, how much, when?
Somewhere that ought to have been asked and answered of record, in the course of Record solicitation of official notice publication business within Anoka County and its municipalities. Ever. Newsprint. Ink. Delivery services. It is what one ordinarily thinks of in thinking of the commonly used term "newspaper," in commonly used contexts - including being honestly headquartered in county and "publishing" in-county a "newspaper" (as the term is commonly understood in ordinary usage)."
Thank you for your good work, Eric.
