Mr. Fischer’s commentary is interesting and informed. I tend to agree with his sentiments… but I see it as an indictment of the mainstream media in general. Or maybe society in general. Dissenting viewpoints must be shouted down!

More Statesman-specific:

I was an employee of the Statesman, back in the Glory Days (mid-to-late 60s). Well, okay – I exaggerate maybe. I was a paper boy. First delivering the AFTERNOON edition! M-F, 35 cents a week, or 45 cents if you wanted the Sunday morning paper, as well. I can remember visiting the offices and production plant, down at 6th and Bannock. The office seemed just like in the movies – rows of desks, guys with the green visors, tobacco smoke thick in the air. Everybody hurrying and scurrying. And out back? Huge, noisy printing presses with newsprint coming off a giant roll and through the maze. Molten lead, and typesetters lining up the print. Pretty impressive, to the eyes of a young kid.

Times have certainly changed! The printed, thrown-on-your-porch morning paper is a curiosity nowadays. The situation certainly isn’t unique to The Statesman. (But any long-time observer could see there was trouble a-brewin’, when they shut down their own printing press a few years back.)

Is the Statesman a liberal cesspool? Those accusations have been leveled for as long as I’ve been paying attention. But let’s not ignore the voices who complain that it’s the mouthpiece of the conservative power brokers. You can’t please everybody… or anybody.

If they truck the printed edition in from Twin Falls… stick a fork in it, because it’s done.

I always thought the next step was going to be 4 print issues per week and 3 online, like the Portland paper.

Here it comes…

Likely a merger about to be announced. Was very common back when TV news finally hit it’s stride in the 1970-80s.

If not, pick a handful of their best people and invite them to publish their work on your new for profit electronic daily paper that you will skipper?!?

If true, it is sad but not a huge loss as it has slowly wilted for years now.

Dave, you think the statesman covers any local news NOW? It’s a pathetic little paper, and getting littler all the time.

Note in the Times-News story they print 20000 copies for themselves and Elko newspaper. Adding the Statesman will be another 20000 copies.

Do the math: Twin Falls’ metro area population in 2010 was 106,508 (larger now, of course); the population of the Boise metro area was 664,422 in 2016.

So the newspaper print run for Times-News (and Elko) is the same as Statesman but Statesman’s population area is SIX times larger. Shows how much circulation the Statesman has lost. Pathetic.

I agree with Boise Musician regarding focusing on local news. But that requires reporters to find/write about local news. Don’t forget, the Statesman’s editorial/layout people work in Modesto or Fresno or somewhere down there!

I agree about wanting the Statesman to focus on local news. There’s so much going on with development in Boise that is unsettling — the stadium complex and trolley downtown, and sprawling subdivisions paving over our foothills and fields.
The Statesman could be doing so many stories about all the pros and cons associated with these projects — including traffic congestion and air quality and road safety.

Does building more housing necessarily help with affordable housing, and does it really help with our taxes? For a new subdivision with mazes of mansions, how much does it cost the taxpayers to provide all the services — schools; police, fire, and ambulance; sanitation and plowing? How much does it cost not only to build new roads and pipes and power lines, but to maintain this infrastructure over the following decades?

How have other cities handled growth — such as Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Salt Lake City? What has happened in these cities that we may want to avoid, and have any of these cities implemented any innovative solutions for the better?

I’m sad to say that Boise is likely to be overwhelmed with concrete and asphalt and neon and noise — and that only a tiny few in business and government will benefit to the detriment and distress of the vast majority of us.

With the stakes so high, it seems that local news could be really fascinating and exciting. I think the Statesman ran a good story about the grassroots rally against the proposed CVS on State and 16th/17th; and I appreciate very much that they ran (Oct. 20th) a guest opinion I wrote against the widening of State Street — however, my hunch is that the Statesman’s coverage of local news is just scratching the surface.

For example, whether one is a big believer in global warming or climate change or whatever it is called next, all of us can be highly concerned about suffocating from car exhaust during our occasional weather inversions.

The future of Boise as it is being decided now is a great drama with huge implications for all of us. It’s a tragedy if this is to be superficially reported, or not at all.

My sincere thanks to Dave at the Boise Guardian for his valiant efforts to alert us locally — but he could use some help with this massive mission. I hope he finds some other knights-errant to aid him in taking on the windmills of power and wealth that threaten to bully and bulldoze our uniquely wonderful Boise into just another bland and boring version of Everywhere Else, USA.

EDITOR NOTE–Good thoughts, but try to shorten the comments a bit! You are correct that I can use some reporting assistance. We have the site and a pretty fair readership, but to increase the amount of local content, I can use some non-partisan help.

Steven C. Fischer – BRAVO!!!

Where are the good old days when I, after a morning run, all ready for the man and duty, open the morning paper, glance at the headlines skewed toward editorial “shove it down my throat” agendas and rage Ah, the odour of newsprint and ink and the sound unlike no other that startles cats and brings dogs to their knees as I rip up, snarl and throw the headlines to the floor? To the Statesman: being relevant is hard to do. Few have survived for being editorially non-biased.

What is the Idaho Statesman’s real mission? Propaganda.

Since JFK, and especially since Reagan, the USA has been nudged much closer to oligarchy and, eventually, a dictatorship than most citizens realize. Have no doubt the Progressive-Bolsheviks are here among us now. They have seized strategic positions in Media, Education, Healthcare, Labor, The Courts, and Government Bureaucracies. They have legions of watchers surfing social media ready to viciously attack and destroy the character of anyone who dare speak truth and common sense. No one is beyond their reach as is exemplified by Trump having very little control of his executive branch 14 months after election.

Mr. Fischer encapsulates the anxious disgust and outrage of a large majority in this country. Most fear speaking out for the Progressive-Bolshevik agents are watching.

Do you write for the Statesman? Either give us truthful unbiased and verified news… or retire to run the ski lifts and shut the hell up! You are damaging the country with your daily stream of manipulative bullshit.

I’m glad for the good comments here, and ask pardon for my wordiness. I’ll try to be more brief. It seems to me that there is a culture war for the heart of America between the secularists and the traditionalists; and the secularists want to radically change America into the opposite of itself.

This dire threat saddens me greatly, but I am hopeful that most Americans are still well-meaning. Like a vintage home, I am hopeful that we can work with all people of good will to restore America to the best of its past, while making select improvements to help it reach the fullness of its potential. We can make America better without renouncing our heritage, but rather embracing and celebrating the considerable good in it.

It’s quite a challenge to save America, requiring not only courage in the moment, but a patient perseverance for the long haul. Peacefully and prayerfully, I am hopeful we can win over our neighbors to appreciate and preserve the great goodness of America.

To me, the struggle is symbolized in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” –and may we attract people away from garish and loud Pottersville into the traditional values and simple pleasures and lasting joys of Bedford Falls.

While sort of off the topic of printing newspapers….Easterner and Stephen C. Fischer offer a good debate. There is indeed a cultural “war” waging in the U.S. Some call it a cultural “righting,” or fixing many of our ingrained discriminatory cultural practices and their influence on the law. Others call it cultural “cleansing,” or the wiping out of our history and all that makes us a free, prosperous, and “great” country.

Many mainstream newspapers support a view of the proper place of the former, and call racist, sexist, and nationalist all that voice fear of the latter.

I am by choice Christian, conservative, and Republican, but my Party loses the argument every day on sexuality. You would think it had just been discovered. God hard-wired me as heterosexual, so why would I question how he wired others? Who under our Constitution should not get equal application of the law?

Hundreds of years ago the navies of the world were known for sailors’ “ship wives.” It just wasn’t an issue until we made it one.

On the other hand, in my writing work – privately owned – I only write for, and accept contracts from those I support. I will not accept a KKK marketing gig, nor a sanctuary for illegal activity gig, nor an anti-gun rights gig, etc.

All said, private newspapers can pretty much do the same, and as readers we just need to consider the ownership and move our own needle of understanding how they report news as we read it. I have no problem with the left-leaning content of the Statesman, they just won’t deliver it to me – see my previous post!

Actually, it’s the secularist sexualists who make a big deal of sex. They’re the ones who parade their sexuality down Main Street; who force conscientious objectors to bake cakes for their so-called marriages, at the price of fierce persecution; and who want to inundate grade-schoolers with their propaganda that anything goes all the time.
These are the same people who want to restrict any religious discussion to the shadows. However, there is no mention of a separation of Church and State anywhere in our founding documents — it’s a scam! Why don’t religious people have as much of a right to participate in the public discussion as anti-religious people?
Actually, much of Christian morality is based on human reason and an understanding of the natural law — and any sex that does not allow the possibility of conceiving children is unnatural and inauthentic. Until very recently in America, that was a matter of common sense and common decency — although I’m not aware of anyone ever being persecuted for their sexual practices.
Having an attraction of some kind doesn’t make it natural or normal. There are all kinds of disorders, and they are only healed if they are treated as such. Our prisons would be empty if it was allowable to say that I just acted on my natural attractions and inclinations.
This all relates to the original post by the Guardian about the decline of newspapers, because just about all of them have become tools for secular propaganda rather than objective reporters of society. This seems a big part of their downfall.
As Chesterton said, if sex ceases to be a slave, it becomes a tyrant. It’s like an opioid. For society, it really does come down to Bedford Falls or Pottersville. Where do you want to live?

May be their circulation is zeroing in on their one remaining demographic. If they had remotely unbiased coverage and bothered to cover anything outside of Bieter’s precious downtown corridor then may be the rest of the valley would have more reason to care and read / subscribe?

The journalism ethic died quite a while ago, and with it their subscribers.

I could not help but focus on the total press run for the Statesman at 30,000 daily papers. That number says a lot about what influence newspapers have. The Press Tribune is something around 20,000 papers and they killed off their Monday copy of the paper. The real deal is newspapers have become an antiquated way to find out daily news. They do a decent job of the obituaries but as far as news goes they can’t compete with their online competition. I take 3 newspapers and only 1 does me a newsworth service.. that is the Wall Street Journal.

Sad to say, Story Idea, the common man in America has been largely forsaken not only by many of our leaders in government and business and entertainment and the media, but in religion. Those of us with traditional faith and morals are truly considered to be deplorables, while the secularists are supposedly the cool kids of power and popularity.
As for me, I’m glad to be among the lowly traditionalists of Bedford Falls, rather than the elitist secularists of Pottersville — with their garish greed and sleazy lust.
While I am not always in agreement with President Trump, I am very much with him in putting America first, as opposed to the secularists of internationalism and pseudo-sophistication. It seems that somehow Trump has become a rallying point for traditional America based on the values of traditional Christianity. If he continues to rise to the occasion and support us, I will continue to support him with increasing enthusiasm.
It’s a hard struggle to be so despised and disregarded, but I am hopeful for the eventual triumph of the common man in America with common sense and common decency and common kindness. I am hopeful that, with humble prayer, simple goodness will win the day.

To conclude on topic, Easterner, the Idaho Statesman and most of the other media in America is just right for you — shielding you in your superiority from the opinions of deplorable commoners like me — that are vague and ignorant, based on fear, weak and wrong.

EDITOR NOTE–Much of this comment dealing with the issue of abortion was deleted. Another comment, obviously posted tongue-in-cheek by a different writer about men vs women was simply deleted. PLEASE stay on topic and don’t bait one another!