Mostly About Home-Town Newspapers

Sunday, February 21, 2010. Getting your name in the paper can be good news, bad news, or just plain strange news. Sauk Centre's got it all three ways.

An article on DL-Online (Detroit Lakes) starts with this headline: "Paranormal Files: The Palmer House's ghostly guests" (February 13, 2010).

Then there's this, from KSAX: "Heavy Snowfall Boosts West Central Minnesota's Snowmobile Sales" (February 15, 2010). The connection there is Centre
Sports.

And, there's another KSAX story: "Level Three Sex Offender Moving to Sauk Centre" (February 16, 2010). It's the same information we've been seeing for a while now: Dustin Ayres, a young man who's sexually assaulted underage girls and violated parole before - will be our new neighbor.

Second chances (third, in Mr. Ayres' case) are, I think, a good idea. And, according to the law, he's served his sentence. And will have his activities scrutinized for the next decade, I understand.

I hope he takes advantage of this opportunity, and makes better choices than he has in the past. That's his photo, by the way, from the Minnesota Department of Corrections, via the Sauk Centre Herald (Thanks, to Bryan Zollman, who has been covering the Dustin Ayres story. I read in the online edition that there's going to be more information in this Tuesday's Herald.)

I haven't been out all that much this week, apart from a trip Lakeview clinic, to get an expert opinion on how I feel. No big deal, but I've learned to listen when my wife tells me that the doctor should see me. (More, in a Through One Dad's Eye post.)

So, here's something I've been saving for an occasion like this: three photos of the Sauk Centre Herald. Big deal? If you live in Sauk Centre, yes. After the photos, I'll harangue (briefly) about home-town newspapers.


Sauk Centre Herald front page. February 9, 2010.


What can I say? It's a home-town paper: and pretty good reading. February 9, 2010.


And, like just about any paper, the Sauk Herald has an advertising supplement - the Classy Canary - and a sports section. February 9, 2010.

There's more to a home-town newspaper than being a place to put legal notices. Sauk Centre would probably get along without the Sauk Centre Herald - but I'm pretty sure that we'd miss the chance to read about what's gone on during the week, how the local teams are doing, and how some of our neighbors are doing.

And I'd have had to wait longer to get involved with the Internet. The Sauk Centre Herald was Sauk Centre's first Internet service provider, in the late 1990s. 1997, if my memory serves.