Marshall Helmberger: Publisher of the Timberjay The interview was conducted May 7, 2011, near Tower, Minnesota.

[The recorder experienced technical difficulties because of the solar-powered outlet. We started again.] Jon Collins: So Im sorry you said you went to which school? Marshall Helmberger: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Collins: So what brought you up here? Helmberger: Well, both my parents were from northern Minnesota, although not northeastern Minnesota, but I was always interested in this area. Actually I had looked at moving to Alaska, spent a summer there and it was just too far away from family and friends and this seemed like a reasonable compromise. Its pretty similar except for the lack of mountains here. I always wanted to live out in the woods in a log cabin so I bought this property when I was in high school and started building after getting out of school. Collins: And you bought the property in high school, was your plan to come out here and actually build a log cabin? Helmberger: Yeah, yep that was, had been my goal for quite some time and I hadnt decided where, like I said, but eventually when I settled on northern Minnesota this seemed like the right place. Its a beautiful spot. Collins: Sure, and so what year was this, do you remember? Helmberger: Sure, well it was 1984 that we moved up here and it wasnt a good time to be on the Range because all of the mines had shut down and this was it was like the Great Depression up here. So you couldnt really get a job and so we started looking for a variety of opportunities. We did a lot of things initially to scratch out a living and planted trees for the forest service and I did some freelance writing for a few years and this opportunity at the newspaper came up after we had been here for several years. Collins: And how did you get into that? Helmberger: Well a fellow that we knew named Bill Arthur had started a community development effort in the little town of Orr. And I had gone there to interview him because I had been doing freelancing for a little journal of public affairs that was put out by the McKnight Foundation. And so I went there to talk about their community development efforts and one of the things they had done

was start this paper called The Timber Jay. And so in as we discussed all the various things Bill kept coming back to the idea that he sure could use some help with the Timber Jay and he also wanted to regionalize it because I think that he realized there was no way to make a paper survive in a town of 250 with minimal business and so he convinced my wife and I to start a edition of the Timber Jay in Tower and he condescended to it by telling us it would take about 10 hours a week and we learned immediately that it was a lot bigger job than that. And then shortly after we started the paper here he decided he was going to leave town for a couple years and so basically said here, why dont you run the paper and at that point it was either sink or swim. And we decided to go for it and it turned out to be successful. Collins: So, who owns the Timber Jay right now? Helmberger: Well my wife and I are the majority owners. Theres a minority shareholder too, but he doesnt have any involvement in the running of the paper. And then back in 96 after we had been running the paper for about six years, just in Tower and Orr, we started an additional paper in Ely and so since then weve had three editions of the paper. And we run themtheyre zoned. Each is zoned separately. And we have an office in each community. Collins: As you were getting into the newspaper business, what was your, what did you think you were getting yourself into. I mean, what was your impression of the workload and what the life was like? Helmberger: We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we were starting it, but you know, and really over time the, we got much more involved in it. And I think we started out originally I think part of the reason that Bill Arthur thought it wasnt going to take very long to actually do the paper was because he believed in using wire service copy and things like that, see he had signed the paper up for the weekly Associated Press and shortly after we got involved, we realized that wasnt really what we wanted to do because the Associated Press didnt have stories on our communities in most cases and there really was a lack of news reporting in in our communities here, especially in Cook and Tower and Orr. Ely did have an existing paper and so did Cook and Tower and they still do. Weve co-existed, you know in a town of 500 people in Tower weve coexisted with two newspapers for 20 years. They had a very different mission than we did. They were more of the, old fashioned who visited who approach to small town newspapering. And that was fine, I mean that served a niche, but we wanted something that was more focused on real reporting and did investigative reporting, thinks like that, so that was our niche. And then I guess thats the way that weve been able to coexist. The other thing that helped us that we were more regional in our focus and in terms of, because we had the different editions we attracted some larger advertisers so we didnt have to just survive on just local advertising alone.

Collins: And his was in the late 80s? Helmberger: Well we started the, The Timber Jay started in late 1989 and then we started the Tower edition in March of 1990. And so its been running since then. Collins: So you had been up here for a number of years before that. Helmberger: Right, we had been up here for about six years. Collins: So what was the communitys reaction when you took over the papers? Helmberger: They were supportive. We had plenty of support from the business community, which is what it took. I think partly because they all knew us. Wed only been here six years but we did all of our shopping in Tower and we didnt go down to Virginia or Duluth like a lot of people here will go down there to shop, and people appreciate that. And if you do business with them, theyll do business with you. So they were supportive of that and I think for the first year or so Im not sure what readers necessarily thought. We were learning as we went and we didnt have a lot of maybe good models, you know in looking at other weekly newspapers. So it was the first time we went down to the Minnesota Newspaper Association convention, that was a real eye-opener to see that there were some really great weekly newspapers out there. So we learned a lot from that. I remember they always had the award winning papers on a big series of bulletin boards down there and at the end of the convention they just take them down and threw them all away, well we grabbed handfuls of them and figured were gonna steal some of the good ideas here, you know? Which is fine, it seems to be the way it works in the newspaper business, you know if someones got a good idea, you run with it. In fact, thats what those conventions are about half the time, sharing ideas. So that was great, in fact nowadays I get occasional calls from publishers that want to know about something were doing. Jon; Talk about the transition from more AP content to more, original local content. Helmberger: It actually happened really quickly. I dont think we were six months into it when we realized we didnt want to be using that AP copy. Just, you know, not that it was bad, it was good reporting, it just wasnt really that relevant to what we were doing. It was funny, because Bill had a kind of different idea. I remember shortly after he started the paper, we had invaded Panama. Well, Bill decided he was going to do a story on the invasion of Panama and got up the gumption to call the Pentagon and talk to some spokesperson there. And we looked at it like theres 50 different ways youre going to get news on that, what people couldnt get news on was the local stuff. So we transitioned very quickly. And it took us some time. It wasnt like you got to understand immediately all of the different connections that go into so many aspects of whatever decision is

made here, you have to understand whos related to who, and why things are happening the way they are and then just understanding who the, you know, building that Rolodex of contacts, sources, thats critical. That takes time, theres something to the idea of an experienced journalist that has that Rolodex and who knows who to talk to whatever the issue is, so weve gotten better over time, theres no doubt. Collins: and on the Range here people, communities are relatively tight knit. And they go back the history a long time, was that something you guys ran into as a problem right away, or was that just a challenge? Helmberger: Well, there certainly Is parochialism, and it hurt us initially, because there was certainly the feeling among some that we were known as pack sackers, you know somebody who has recently moved to the area. A lot of that has faded away, I mean weve been here almost 30 years. Were still pack sackers, mind you, but we will be till the day we die. But they certainly understand that weve been a real involved in the community. I mean, thats one of the things too that I think has been a big part of the success has been not to just be putting out the paper but also to be you know to try to be community leaders and to be very involved whether its been trying to improve the local school, or working on any number of projects, weve been sometimes almost over extended from being involved in a lot of things. And now were working to start a charter school, which w e should have open in the fall of 2012. Collins: In Tower. Helmberger: Yeah Collins: So how has, not as the newspaper, as yourselves. Helmberger: Right. Yeah Collins: Thats interesting. So tell me about the sort of stories you started doing in your first year at the paper. If you can remember. Helmberger: I have a hard time usually remembering what I wrote about two weeks ago, much less 20 years ago. But you know we started out doing a lot of the same things that most papers doa lot of human interest, you know thats always popular. We always had had a lot of outdoors coverage. Obviously the outdoors is pretty big up here and I had been a naturalist before starting this, I had actually taught at environmental learning center near Virginia, and so I wrote columns and took pictures and have got quite a bit better at that over the years, I got better equipment now, which has really helped. The outdoors section now is one o the most popular parts of the paper. We hear that consistently. Thats something that was a little different. Most of the weeklies, in fact none of the

weeklies up here had really ever done much on the outdoors or nature, things like that and so that kind of gave us our own little niche there. And I think it was a good one, but now some of the other papers had started doing that as well, cause I think they understand that its popular. Collins: Did was the economy on the Iron Range recovered by the time you all started? It was still kind of rough in the late 80s or early 90s. Helmberger: Well you know the economy in the Iron Range never really recovers. You know, its boom and bust and by the time, just about the time you think things are going really good, its about the time the next bust is right around the corner. Weve lived here 27 years and weve been through at least four busts. And youve gotten, its gotten to the point now where you just expect it, its not a surprise anymore. When the mines all shut down and its not a great economy for that. You hear about the resource curse and I think that some degree we have that here. And we havent developed a good entrepreneurial culture I think here because of that, its too easy to just rely on the mines. And so thats been a problem Jon; how do you navigate the powerful interests the mines represent? Its very powerful interests the mines represent. How do you balance that with the community you inform? Helmberger:I guess the thing is the people the people that we write for and the people that we feel we represent would not be the mining companies, it would be the people that work for the mines. And weve certainly reflected that in our news reporting and ion our editorial page as well. We havent done a tremendous amount of coverage of mining issues themselves, I mean we have been reporting certainly on the push to establish the non-ferrous mining but you know, most of the iron mining takes place south of us. Its Virginia to Hibbing and that area, and thats not really our coverage area. We do report and we have reported extensively on mining when it comes to things like drainage from tailings basins which a lot of that does come north of the Pike River into Lake Vermillion so thats certainly been something that weve covered quite a bit. So certainly when they affect our area weve covered it pretty well. Collins: have you heard from the mining companies about your coverage? Helmberger: The mining companies generally dont talk to us too much. Although we certainly do contact them when were doing a story and they are usually willing to say something, but I dont know, when it comes to a company like US Steel, theyre pretty big, I dont think they pay much attention to what were doing here. They dont really seem to care too much about their reputation up here. I mean, its not a great reputation and I dont think they really, it bothers them that much I guess. They have for a century exactly. Theyve had their way.

Collins: Can you talk a little about the sort of stories you covered, because you won a number of awards, through MNA and Im sure through other. Helmberger: We also won the PreMAC three times, and thats like the probably the most prestigious public affairs award in Minnesota, and thats mostly for our investigative reporting which we do a lot of. We did a story on lack of dental access for low income people up here, that was the first time we won the PreMAC and then we also had done an investigation of the St. Louis County foster care system and how it had failed some young people and one of them actually ended up involved in a murder and that was a very interesting story and but weve done lots of investigative pieces over the years. Weve done a lot recently on our school district. Weve been pretty critical of a restructuring plan that theyve implemented that involved the closure of a lot of schools up here and in f act theyre closing the high school in Tower at the end of the school year, and thats going to entail very long bus rides. I mean when youre, the nearest. Theyre planning to send students from Tower to Babbitt, which is 26 miles, so thats not a very good option for students. So thats one of he reasons that theres a lot of community support now for the charter school. Collins: You hear a lot of larger organizations and even daily papers talk about how they dont have the resources for investigate reporting. How do you think you pull it off? Helmberger: Well primarily because were independently owned. And my wife and I dont really care if the paper makes a profit. Its more about, I mean we pay ourselves a living wage and everybody else gets paid a living wage and you know, if theres a little money left over at the end of the year, great, and if not, well well try to do a little better next year, but if we were a larger organization that had profit demands placed upon them and it was routine for papers to expect 20% profit margins, well, we wouldnt be doing what were doing, thats for sure. Collins: How do you pursue these investigative stories then, whats the way that you kind of approach them? Helmberger: Well, usually its that somebody, you know a lot of cases its that somebody has raised an issue with me. And the first thing I do is you hear a lot of things, I mean I get calls all the time, in part because weve got a reputation for doing investigative work. When people have an axe to grind about something, theyll call me, and usually thats all it is is an axe to grind and I dont like to spend my resources on those things. Ill try to decide on an issue that number one I feel is important and then also one thats not being covered. And in some cases actually Ill cover an issue in an outlying community that normally I wouldnt cover if its an important story that is not being covered by another local paper. So weve had that happen before. So and then its a lot of times its just being able to access information. I mean, if you cant get information its hard to do a story, which means a lot of the investigative pieces we do are related to

some kind of government action, because then you can at least usually get the access to information. There are lots of kinds of kind of investigative stuff Id like to do, but its really difficult if its not in the government sphere. Collins: Especially if corporate. Helmberger: Absolutely, yeah, thats difficult to get information on, any of that Collins: Whats been the communitys responses to a lot of these pieces, these investigative pieces Helmberger: Oh, well its been good. I mean people really like it. I mean, thats one of the things we hear a lot, that people really appreciate that work. I mean I think they understand that its going well beyond what they normally would get from their local weekly newspaper but I mean just to give an example, probably the first investigative piece we did was related to the local landfill which had been run by this township for a number of years and they had, it was supposed to run basically at a break even. But they were charging a huge amount of money for any kind of service they provided to the landfill, it was being billed double. And we reported on that and the result was that the township got very upset, they cancelled the operation they ended their operation of the landfill and it went to the county and the cost for people to dump there dropped, so people felt like it was a good thing. We had exposed which was kind of just an abuse. The township had this ability to kind of gouge people and they were taking advantage. Collins: And they were watching right? Helmberger: Yeah, and I think that sort of let people see that, hey theres an advantage to having your local paper dig into some of these things. And its kind of funny too because things tend to go around and when you make somebody mad sometimes because youre doing an investigation Ive learned over the years that theyre not going to stay mad because down the road youre going to be investigating something they want investigated. And we certainly had that happen up in Orr where we had been doing an investigation for quite a while on some improprieties at their city hall. And they were very upset with us for a white but then now, because have been also against this school project which weve been reporting on, now its like were theyre hero. So its kind of funny how it all we laugh, my editor in Cook who is a very reporter, Tom Cline, we kind of laugh about that all the time. That you know, there was another example too up at Crane Lake we had their sewer and water district they had put in this expensive community sewer system and the cost overruns were extraordinary and its become a just a real white elephant and we had been reporting on this and it was fairly critical some of the things that were happening, and I remember one of the board members was very critical at first and eventually he started to realize though that what we were reporting was right. And he turned about 180 degrees

over a period of about six months and then started feeding us information. Cause he wanted it exposed too. So Collins: Do you ever run into problems, you know the Iron Range is famous for the political culture up here. People call it maybe an old boys network, or solidly DFL labor approach. Do you ever run into problems where they just close ranks? Helmberger: Well it does happen. And weve certainly butted heads a number of times with the local power structure, the local legislators, you know and some of the reporting we did out of the city of Orr related to a current state representative and so when we were doing that of course that was, hes DFL and so some of the local legislators didnt appreciate our coverage of that. Collins: You cover environmental issues, too right? Helmberger: Sure Collins: Do you ever run into anything like that, cause I know on the Range theres all this history of antagonism of industry and environment. Do you ever run into problems like that? Helmberger: Oh sure, we kind of had a reputation early on of sort of being the green newspaper up here. I think what made us stand out wasnt that we were particularly pro-environmental, it was just that we were willing to give that side a fair shake and to look at the other papers on the Range, it was almost comical the way any environmental position was portrayed. It was just ridiculed. And we were willing to I guess report their side just equal to the other. And so and I think probably on the editorial page weve certainly have taken some positions that have been probably more in favor of environmental than any of the other papers up here, so I can certainly see that we have that reputation. And it maybe deserved in some cases and maybe not in others. Collins: whats the role of the newspaper in a small community with a still dwindling population? Whats the role of the newspaper as far as youre concerned? Helmberger: Well, youve got a number of roles, from the watchdog, that kind of traditional role of the media. But I think in the small town you also have the role of being a bit of a community booster. And thats also the traditional role of the small town paper anyway. You try to stand up for your community I guess and try to put its issues forward and its needs and concerns out there. And weve certainly tried to do that. If the government bureaucracy was being too slow and doing something that the city was trying to get done, wed let em have it. And the bureaucrats dont like that but then I, thats alright.

Collins: How did you all adapt the internet as it started to come in? Helmberger: Well we were actually were fairly early in going to the web. I mean its one of the nice things about being very small and independent is if you decide you want to do something you can just do it. And we had a fairly primitive website for a number of years and the biggest thing weve tried to figure out is just how do you make it pay? And sold a little advertising on it like most papers and it covers the cost of operating the site but it doesnt make you any money. So were still trying to figure that one out, and wed always provide the content for free although we never provided all of our content. Now we provide probably at least 80 percent of the content we provide that goes in the print edition now goes online. And but we are going to start charging now for that. A lot of papers now have been making that move and so were kind of comfortable with the idea of trying that. I dont know if its going to be any windfall of online subscribers but I think what does happen I know happens is that a lot of people dont subscribe to the print edition. Oh yeah I read your paper all the time online. And it think well, you know, you should probably be subscribing. So maybe well get a few more subscriptions this way. Jon; Print subscriptions? Helmberger: Yeah Collins: Well, it seems what the New York Times is even doing. Helmberger: Oh theyre really making the big shift. Collins: Can you talk about where you think the papers going to be going in the foreseeable future? Helmberger: You know, I dont know. I ask my wife that question regularly, what is the future? Its uncertain enough that I dont really encourage my son to go into the business because I dont know that theres going to be a business and thats a real problem it seems to me because what I really worry is that people are going to have access to news through the internet but theyre not going to have access to important news affecting their communities. Especially in small towns. Nobody on the internet is going to be interested in Tower, Minnesota. Sitting through the Tower city council meetings, things like that. If there isnt a viable business model in the future that supports that, people just arent going to have access to it. I suppose maybe theyll just be able to watch it on over cable, local access cable I guess, but theres a lot that people dont get from just watching the city council meeting, you have to know that theres so much other things that are going on that don just happen in that meeting. Theres a lot of information, a lot of things that happen the scenes, and if youre not reporting on that, people dont know. So Im very worried actually, people will have a thousand different ways to check out on the latest royal wedding or whatever the sensation of the

week is, but in terms of getting the real important news about their lives and their community, Im scared for the future. Cause if people dont have access to that information, how are they supposed to really participate? Collins: Something Ive run into talking to other independent newspapers is theres this distinction between how they approach it and how the big conglomerates approach it. It feels like theyre a lot more invested in the community itself, whereas the conglomerates or the big corporations who own all these different chains, it seems like they want to fill the space. Do you know what I mean? Theres a distinction to how they approach the service, whether its a public service or a profit making service Helmberger: Well I mean just the decisions that you make, just what I was talking about earlier with the, how we can devote resources to investigative reporting or whatever, we can do all kinds of things that we see as being a valuable thing for the community, and yes it probably means that we wont have a 20 percent profit margin at the end of the year, in fact weve never had anything close to a 2o percent profit margin ant the end of the year. Those kinds of things are just never done by these conglomerates because theyre only focused on the bottom line and its amazing to me when I see other papers in much bigger markets that have half the editorial staff that we have. I mean some of the big papers and community seats and they maybe have one news editor and thats about it for reporting staff, maybe a part time staff writer, and we have two local editors, actually three local editors, and myself and I do a lot of reporting and editorial writing, and we have a staff, so we have five editorial staff. So for a paper this size, its kind of crazy actually to have that many. We have two sales people and five editorial people, thats a little bit imbalanced. A lot of papers its the opposite, its five and two, and so I realize that we probably dont do it the way we should do it. Maybe if I had a business background I might do it differently. Collins: Growing up, what did you think of journalism, or did you even think about it? You Didnt consider it a career you said Helmberger: No, never, Im sure my English teacher in high school would faint dead away if she ever found out I went into journalism. I mean, I realized it was important. I grew up reading the paper. I grew up in Bloomington, I read the Star Tribune from about the time I was in eighth grade or so, and I certainly understood the value of it. My family was engaged in politics and things like that so the paper seemed very relevant to me. Collins: Is there anything else that you think is important or any experiences you want to share about the last 20 or so years in this business? Thats a big question. Helmberger: That is. Boy I dont even know where to go with that one.

Collins: Are there any experiences or stories or changes that youre extremely proud of that you think kind of represent the approach that you all take? Helmberger: Well, Im really proud of the staff that weve put together. I dont think it would have been possible had we taken a different approach. Weve been able to hire people away from, in many cases from bigger daily newspapers, and in part because they liked the idea of living here. That was always an attraction for them. But we were able to provide them enough of a salary that it was worthwhile and it certainly I think has paid off. The community is so appreciative. And a lot of times we wonder why do we spend so much time doing this because it is incredibly time consuming. But you get so much positive feedback from people. I think they really have started to appreciate it more and more. And thats gotta be worth something, I guess. I guess we did, kind of felt it was a nice honor too last year when we won the Mills trophy and that was something. Never really thought we would win, so that was nice. And that was kind of a big deal for the staff. They were all excited. Collins: You all have garnered quite a few accolades from the newspaper business in Minnesota. Helmberger: Well, I guess we do, theres a lot of good papers out there. Im pleased to be in the company of some of them. Theres some that I really respect. Collins: My last question I guess is what do you think the role of a newspaper like yours, a weekly newspaper is, in this entire broad, democratic experiment we have going on. Helmberger:I think its critical for some of the reasons we talked about a little bit ago. This is the thing that Im most concerned about in terms of the future of journalism is that people really dont have access to good reporting anymore on so many issues. Its amazing when you see especially whether its television, radio, cable, all these things now, the internet, if its not, newspapers are still doing the kind of reporting that needs to be done for the most part. But thats it, its Im really worried because that seems to be the form of media that is in the most trouble. And if that goes away, I really dont know whats gonna replace it. It think what were going to end up with is very homogenized news, and you see it right now, I can tell you whats going to be on national public radio in the morning, because thats whats in the New York Times. And when you start seeing that recycling of a handful of stories which you have to realize is that theres a million other stories out there youre not getting and heres virtually no way to get them and thats what I see is that our news has become so homogenized and so limited because of it, and theres so many important things that are happening all around and we dont have access to any of it. You can Google it to you hearts content, but really important stuff isnt there. All the trivia about celebrities, hey, its all over there. You can get it a hundred thousand

different site, but boy, try to find something meaningful out there, and its really rare. And it think, and like I said, newspapers are kind of the last bastion of that kind of reporting, and if they go away, I mean, I really dont see how youre going to maintain a viable democracy because I mean the foundation of it, and our founding fathers understood that, the foundation was viable journalism. So, if it disappears were in trouble. Collins: Even at the local level here, without reporting on city council, it raises the question for whos watching right? Helmberger: Absolutely. Collins: Well, thank you so much for talking to me, I appreciate it, its been a pleasure to hear from you. Helmberger: Sure, ok.