by Travis Mateer
The walls of my studio are covered with old newspapers and other ephemera, like this FINAL issue of the Missoula Independent distributed one last time here in Missoula before Matt Gibson helped Lee Enterprises kill it in 2018. I commemorated the 4 year anniversary of this death last September 11th with this post.
Why hasn’t anyone attempted to replace our weekly publication in Missoula? Since I didn’t go to school for journalism–opting instead for an even MORE worthless English degree–I can’t speak to what is taught at J-School, I can only see the resulting products, like Hunter Pauli, and his sentiment about Lee Enterprises effectively killing its already skeletal Montana reporting capacity.
And where was this sentiment expressed? Twitter, of course. Here’s my exchange with this Montana free lance journalist:
If I wasn’t still trying to recoup the cost of dropping $1,200 dollars on a dumpster to remove Todd’s meth shack behind Missoula College, then I might seriously consider making a donation to the stop-@paulimeth-from-being-an-impotent-complainer fund.
I was curious about some of the content Pauli has put out recently, so I checked out Muck Rack and found some articles I’m glad I haven’t read:
Maybe as a contributor to the decline of print media by giving you digital readers all this great free content to consume, I should be more empathetic to the plight of @paulimeth. But with another incident of local risk to my already-agitated morning, I’m all out of empathy.
More on that incident later. Until then, please consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or making a donation at my about page.
Thanks for reading!
JC
My daughter was raped by an intruder in 1987. She was 8 at the time. Since then three packs of journalists have wandered on through doing their journalistic thing, none ever getting close to the truth or asking the right question, which was “Why us?” There is an answer but if the question is never asked by these impartial fools, it does not matter.
I remember that Mark – I wasn’t living very far across town from you, and I had a baby girl of my own. My heart still goes out to your daughter, and I can say that you are a better man than I am, as I probably would have went up to White Sulphur before now, with my skinning knife for some justice.
Pardon my bluntnesss, but don’t you agree that there is definite irony involved in you trashing stories you haven’t read along with the former print journalist whio authored them and who, like you, laments the demise of print journalism and competent reporters?