Business

Pressless Paper Printing Problem

We take no joy in posting an unsubstantiated, but very likely accurate report that our friends at the IDAHO STATESMAN have lost their printer at the IDAHO FREE PRESS.

The troubled Daily Paper farmed out the printing chores to the Nampa paper several years ago. Now word among the few print journalists left in the area has it that the IPT will no longer print the Statesman. Next closest rotary press is at Twin Falls.
TWIN FALLS confirms our story 1/12/18.

That will mean earlier deadlines, less print coverage of late sports, city council meetings, etc. Papers will have to be hauled the 120 miles back to Boise each day–that is the paper remains a daily.

When the latest publisher jumped ship to be a flak for Idaho Power we all wondered about the reasoning behind her move.

A recent circulation notice in the Statesman revealed fewer than half as many subscriptions as they had during the late 60s and early 70s, despite rampant population increases.

Comments & Discussion

Comments are closed for this post.

  1. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 11, 2018, 6:28 pm

    I truly miss the days of getting the newspaper from the nearest local city delivered to the front porch. I tried an online subscription to the Statesman recently, but reluctantly canceled after a front page story glorifying a doctor who is supposedly some kind of heroic pioneer for transgender surgeries in the Northwest.
    Apparently, the Statesmen never considered the possibility that there might be a different point of view from good and thoughtful and well-meaning people. Any disagreement must be a matter of bigotry and stupidity.
    I don’t consider myself a Republican or a Democrat but genuinely an independent. I don’t like elitists in the government and business and the media telling us that we have to change our way of thinking without even a discussion. It seems that so-called experts know what’s best for us, and that we should bow to them without blinking, grateful for their enlightenment and groveling in awe of their majesty.
    These social engineers, who want to control our lives to the minutest detail, and severely punish any dissenters, not only claim to know without a smidgen of doubt how to manage the climate — they have the arrogant audacity of gods who want to change the fundamental nature of the traditional family as it has been practiced by diverse cultures throughout time and across the earth. Rather than following the natural law about human nature, these elitists want to bend human nature to their own haughty willfulness, as tyrants of our private lives to the point of telling us what to eat, imposing their unsubstantiated dogmas on all (see the case of the Klein family in Oregon which is being savagely persecuted to financial ruin for non-compliance with secular orthodoxy). Again, we don’t even receive the courtesy of an explanation for why everything we have believed in for so long has been abruptly and arbitrarily turned upside down by our godlike superiors.
    P.S. Let’s just be honest and acknowledge that our supposed social betters in Hollywood and Manhattan and D.C. — as well as their followers in faraway places including Boise — would embrace Trump if he supported unrestricted abortion as a means for enabling their obsession with unrestrained sexuality. It’s pretty much just that simple.
    P.P.S. As a note to the editor, it’s okay with me if you scrub this comment. I’m just a benighted old romantic fool who prefers Bedford Falls to Pottersville — a Pottersville not only increasingly decadent with greed and lust, but increasingly disdainful and intolerant of traditional Americans.

  2. 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.

  3. chicago sam
    Jan 11, 2018, 7:32 pm

    Quite likely if the report is true of no more printing of Statesman at the Press Tribune we will see the Press-Tribune cease operations altogether.
    They need the revenue as their circulation is probably parallel to the Statesman in decreased circulation. You may be the paper of last resort Dave.

    EDITOR NOTE–My bet is the IPT simply doesn’t have the capacity to print the Statesman along with their own paper and the others they run on national contracts and weeklies.

  4. 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…

  5. Boise Musician
    Jan 11, 2018, 10:54 pm

    The last few times I have visited the Idaho Statesman web page, or passed by a newsstand, the front page is covered with national news, from a single viewpoint.

    Since I can find national news anywhere, I would like to see the Statesman focus on local issues, using local reporters, interviewing local citizens, instead of regurgitating AP news and press releases from Mayor Bieter’s office.

    I’m glad I discovered the Boise Guardian. It is one place you can find news about issues relevant to Boise itself.

  6. 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.

  7. Online news source MagicValley.com’s Heather Kennison reported on Jan 5

    “Times-News Publisher Travis Quast announced Friday that the Twin Falls newspaper would print the Idaho Statesman, beginning with its March 5 edition. The Times-Newssecured a three-year contract with the Statesman, which currently prints in Nampa through the Idaho Press-Tribune.”

    http://magicvalley.com/news/local/the-times-news-will-soon-print-the-idaho-statesman-but/article_04bc4caf-97d9-5b70-b6aa-dba377788501.html

    EDITOR NOTE–Thanks for the confirmation. Perhaps the Statesman will post it in the next few days.

  8. Bieter Begone
    Jan 12, 2018, 6:34 am

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

  9. Eagle Writer
    Jan 12, 2018, 7:18 am

    I love print newspapers. My Wall Street Journal (still beefy) comes to me six days a week and I take joy in reading it front to back. I have tried and tried to subscribe to the Statesman, but it has been a disaster.

    First, my wife and I traveled a bit and I tried to use their website for a vacation hold. It seldom worked, and you could only use it for a few weeks at a time.

    At Albertsons in the lobby a guy was giving away Statesman papers and hawking subscriptions. I told him my problem and he said to simply cancel the paper and resubscribe when I returned. This seems a bit cumbersome to do 5 or 6 times a year, but I tried.

    But the last time (just last summer) I tried to resubscribe I was told there was no delivery in my neighborhood. Really? In a common Eagle subdivision of 600 homes? My next door neighbor still gets his, but I guess I’ve been banned…

    So no print paper for me, and I just don’t want it digitally. It is a shame because the Boise/Eagle/Meridian valley should be big enough for a local news, home delivery, print newspaper.

  10. 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!

  11. “If you don’t print exactly what I want to read from my viewpoint of the world, I will cancel my subscription.”
    – So says a narrow-minded, ignorant person.

    Life is a book. If you’re reading the same page over and over, you are missing the story.

    EDITOR NOTE–Life is many books with many stories. If you limit the subject matter of books, you limit the audience.

  12. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 12, 2018, 10:25 am

    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.

  13. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 12, 2018, 12:15 pm

    Hi Easterner,
    The pages of propaganda from the secular sexualists are thrust upon us over and over and over and over and over… ad infinitum and ad nauseam. It’s a huge challenge to get away from it, like trying to keep dry in a driving rain. At this point, I’m weary of the relentless manipulation by the secularists, and how anyone who questions their rigid orthodoxy is idiotic and hateful. It’s becoming a truism to say that the secularists tolerate everything but traditional Americans, whom they continually attack with a vicious fury. So why would I subscribe to any publication that assumes I am utterly lacking in intelligence and integrity and treats me as though I am a contemptible bigot?

    In response to the good comment by bikeboy, it seems to me that the liberals and the conservatives are in cahoots, working together to grab most of the power and wealth and leaving the masses of us scrambling for the leftovers. The powerbrokers may put up a pretense of fierce disagreement for public display, but notice how they transition back-and-forth from Wall Street to Washington, D.C. so effortlessly and unashamedly.

    Locally, notice the Guardian article in October about some of our candidates for City Council taking campaign money from developers. Consequently, look for the connections in Boise between politicians and businessmen in cozy relationships to their mutual aggrandizement. It may not even be illegal, since these are the kinds of people who write the laws for their own gain.

    When it comes to greed, the libertarian anarchists and the socialist tyrants gladly gather together in backrooms to divide the spoils and control the common man. The blowhard businessman Trump is in the Whitehouse; Clinton, Inc. uses the façade of philanthropy to enrich themselves with corporate pay-to-play; Obamanation vacations with tycoon Richard Branson on his personal tropical isle; and the 100-billion-dollar man Jeff Bezos of Amazon buys up the Washington Post. Meanwhile we, the common people, are the utter dependents of this tiny, de facto cabal of elitists, little more than slaves to an amorphous conspiracy of Big Business and Big Government that plays us like saps — dividing us artificially, and appeasing us with the modern equivalents of bread and circuses, as well as endless sensual allures to make us addled and incapacitated to resist.

  14. Steven C. Fischer – BRAVO!!!

  15. Eastie, he sank your battleship.

  16. 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.

  17. Chickenhawk
    Jan 12, 2018, 8:27 pm

    Over the years that I have read the Statesman, I have noticed the substantial decrease in size and substantive content. Gone were many of the in-depth “dig beneath the headlines” content, replaced with mostly national stories and the few local stories were mostly regurgitated press releases from the flacks at city, county, state, etc.

    I could sense that the end was near not only when the printing press on Curtis was shuttered, but also when several well-known personalities headed for the exits – among them Mike Prater, who called it quits after nearly 30 years at the sports desk to take a full-time job at KTIK-FM.

    I fail to see the financial sustainability of trucking in printed versions of the paper from Twin Falls every morning. The corporate juggernauts and Internet continue to squeeze the last bit of juice out of the orange.

  18. 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.

  19. What if?

    The Free Press in America is intended to be the fourth branch of government but it is neglecting to fulfill the role.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgGnBCDfCLM

  20. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 13, 2018, 10:53 am

    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.

  21. Stephen C. Fischer (good thing you got the “C.” in there),
    I’m not sure why your post is to me, but you lost me at your first sentence.

    “secular sexualists”?

    I am a big supporter of secularism (separation of church and state) and I am a big fan of sex and sexy people.
    I do like the end to the statement, “thrust upon us over and over and over and over and over…”
    Yeah baby! Do that over and over again. (Freud 101?).

    “Sexulists” btw is defined as:
    1.one who explains phenomena by sexuality
    2 : one who follows the sexual or artificial system of Linnaeus (classifying organisms).

    — What? Neither definition makes sense in your context. But we all know what you meant- ‘prudes are offended by sexual people’. Bummer for you man!

    We can make America better?

    Stephen K. Bannon? Stephen, is that YOU? Now that you are not at Breitbart, you have come to the Boise Guardian with your “traditionalist” (code word) message? Wow!

    See, you gave it away by using a middle initial.

    AS for me and my battleship, she is still floating with SEXY (or is that sexulist?) Cher- even in museum status, everyone loves Cher!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKbwR7WXN4

  22. Eagle Writer
    Jan 15, 2018, 10:14 am

    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!

  23. Mr. Fischer…
    What a story you tell..Interesting!
    ‘Statesman”.. Boise does need a decent paper..all can agree on that..but ‘Cost benefit analysis’ shows that a ‘decent’ paper cannot happen…paying a decent reporter a decent wage to gather and report all necessary local information would not pay, advertising is scant which was always the financial base in publishing, attention span..TV..internet grabing what little there is…
    Welcome to the modern world traditional guy…
    As for “traditional values” and what America was…interesting concept.. Civil War, Klan, Jim crow, insider dealing with business has always been, if you have any concept of history you don’t want that back…We in the south call your concept..’Moonlight and Magnolias’

  24. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 15, 2018, 3:05 pm

    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?

  25. It’s probably fair to assume that the area’s Weekly “alternative” paper is also struggling. Recently they announced significant cutbacks in their (free) delivery points.

    (If Mr. Fischer’s perception of the DAILY paper is that it’s secular and devoid of Judeo/Christian morality, imagine what he must think of the WEEKLY paper! Perhaps both publications have marginalized their content, and alienated a significant percentage of their potential customer base.)

  26. 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.

  27. A few things come to mind:

    Oh no, where am I going to get my dose of daily tripe?

    Good riddance to this liberal rag!

    So many fish – so few Daily Mistakens to wrap them in!

  28. 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.

  29. Mr. Fischer,

    “secular sexualists” vs. religion?

    Although I understand and even empathize with your complaints, I’d like to point out the organized religions in the USA have also become dangerously liberalized and anti-American. The Catholic Church for example is the number one importer and supporter of impoverished uneducated illegals (because they ask fewer questions about perverted priests). Nearly all of the religions, especially the wealthy ones, have big programs to help imports to get settled, get pregnant, and receive the government dole. It’s why the pope loves the obama and hates the trump. You may have noticed nearly all US religious leaders condemn the trump. Point is the religions have also aligned with the secular sexualists because it’s big money and membership for them. It’s much bigger than the media. It’s yuge. Nearly half the population of this country is willing to flush what we have down the toilet for economic theories that have repeatedly failed. Like Mike Savage says, it’s a mass self loathing metal illness. It’s a race to the bottom. Brace yourself. The trump is an anomaly that the GOP wants gone as bad as the Dems, as soon as he leaves both parties will quickly return to the business of destroying the middle class.

    Look and listen into Davos this week as the uber rich and powerful condemn you and me for having built a higher standard of living than those s-hole countries. They are plotting our destruction and the propping up of global socialism.

  30. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 21, 2018, 8:09 pm

    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.

  31. “the common man”.
    ha! I’m interested in that description.

    LOL. Especially funny posted on the same day as the Women’s March…the “common woman” is usually left out of such rhetoric.

    The two above comments sound much like the real Stephen K. Bannon and Richard B. Spencer (middle initial type of people) of the altright community. Vague. Ignorant. Based on fear.

    In the spirit of Freedom of Press (on topic) I simply offer the rebuttal that those opinions are weak and wrong.

  32. Stephen C. Fischer
    Jan 23, 2018, 8:35 am

    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!

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