A life in newspapers: ink in my veins
By Dave Stoneberg
ST. HELENA, Calif. — I have always loved newspapers.
From 1977 to 2020, I worked as a reporter, photographer and editor at six local small-town newspapers. Only one of them was a daily paper, the Lake County Record-Bee; the other five were weeklies: the Batavia Chronicle, The Weekly Calistogan, the Middletown Times Star, Clearlake Observer-American and the St. Helena Star. It’s important to say their names, to remember those newspapers, because only the St. Helena Star still exists.
Batavia, Middletown and the city of Clearlake are part of what is called a “news desert” as local newspapers are closing, victims of rising costs -- for employees, delivery people, newsprint and ink – and declining revenues – from classified and display newspaper advertising, legal notices, and slumping sales both for subscriptions and papers sold in stores or in news racks.
After working for 14 years at the St. Helena Star, most of them as editor, I was laid off with no notice on Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, given a severance package, and I retired from newspapers. That retirement didn’t last even three years because in mid-May, Calistoga journalist Tim Carl called me with an intriguing offer: He was putting together experienced writers and editors for an online news and information service called Napa Valley Features and wondered if I wanted to be a part of it.
Of course I joined. I’ve got ink in my veins, as they say. Let me tell you why.
The Chicago Tribune
When I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, my parents and my brothers read the Chicago Tribune, which was delivered to our driveway seven days a week. Like many youngsters growing up in the 1960s, I devoured the funny pages – “Peanuts” (my favorite), “Beetle Bailey,” “Hagar the Horrible,” “Garfield,” “Blondie” and so many others. On Sundays they were in color!
I also read the sports pages, stories about the Cubs, White Sox, Bears and Blackhawks. No matter how poorly they did, we still rooted for Chicago’s teams, especially the lowly Cubs, Mr. Wrigley’s National League baseball team.
I don’t remember following the Bulls as a youngster. It was only later, when Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan arrived, that we did. One time I was traveling with my parents in the Florida Keys – they had moved to Florida by then and I was visiting -- and the one requirement for that day was that we had to get to the hotel before the Bulls’ game was on TV.
Sports columnist Dave Condon always had something worth reading. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that when he wrote about his daughter, Barbara, he always said she was 12, no matter how old she was.
The classified ads also drew my attention, especially as I learned to drive and began looking for a suitable car. I found it, a white 1959 Triumph TR-3 that was in reasonable shape and cost only $400. For years I read the classified ads, especially the listings selling sports, classic and foreign cars.
My father was in the advertising business at some of the big agencies in Chicago, and in 1970 he started his own promotion, advertising and marketing business called Pro/Mark. His office was in the 20-story McCormick Building at 332 S. Michigan Ave., directly across from Grant Park, just down the street from the Art Institute. Off in the distance was Lake Michigan.
I recently ran across one of my first newspaper articles that had been clipped by my mom, who was a daily newspaper reader all of her life.
The article, published in the Naperville Central High School newspaper, Smoke Signals, sought donations to help save and move St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was built in 1864. My mother was an integral part of saving that church. She and others formed the Naperville Heritage Society in 1969. Its members spent a year raising $20,000 to pay for a moving company to cut the church into three parts, load the pieces onto flatbed trucks and move them across town. Volunteers restored the rebuilt wooden Gothic church, and it became one of the cornerstones of a new historic village, Naper Settlement.
After graduating from Naperville Central High School in 1972, I took a year off from school to work before I spent two years at a small liberal arts college in Ripon, Wisconsin.
Would I become a journalist? Yes. The die was cast after I switched majors from Russian history and language to journalism in 1975, when I spent a summer at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana taking classes and working on a newspaper.
From there I went on to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and studied journalism and photography for two years.
One of my most memorable teachers was Joe Marsh, who taught us about ledes, the first sentence of a news story. He said it should be no longer than 20 words and the shorter the better. How I have struggled to write a good opening sentence -- or in journalism jargon, lede -- one that will entice you to read the rest of the story.
In the fall of 1977 I got a job at a weekly newspaper in Batavia, Illinois. Two years later I moved from Illinois to California and got a job working at The Weekly Calistogan. I’ve worked for newspapers in both Napa and Lake counties.
In St. Helena
Although I have spent 43 years in community journalism, I can’t quite match the record of the St. Helena Star’s great publisher and editor, Frank Mackinder, who was at the helm for 46 years, from 1891 to 1937.
Mariam Hovanesian Hansen, research director for the St. Helena Historical Society, said, “When you write about the ownership, don’t only include Edward Starr Baldwin. Frank Mackinder was far more important to the survival of the newspaper and owned it for far longer. It was a much better paper under him than Baldwin. Give him his due!”
In St. Helena there’s a deep appreciation for the St. Helena Star and its history. People care passionately about it and continue to want the print edition to read on Thursdays. It doesn’t matter that the same news was published on the Star’s website a day or two earlier. People also care about the Star’s editor Jesse Duarte, who is an exceptional person, honest and ethical, and does an excellent job of telling the story of St. Helena.
Starr Baldwin
The following information is from a column I wrote for the St. Helena Star celebrating its history. Hansen provided the newspaper’s history.
Edward Starr Baldwin was born Sept. 26, 1899, in Warren, Illinois. He never used his first name, Edward (he was named after his father, Edward Henry Baldwin), and the similarity between Starr, a family name, and the newspaper is just a coincidence.
After working in newspapers in both Washington and California, Baldwin started working at the St. Helena Star in 1934, when his mother, Lola Grace Mixon Baldwin, married the Star’s owner, Frank Mackinder. Three years later, when Baldwin was 37, Mackinder passed away and Lola appointed him editor. He became publisher on his mother’s death on July 27, 1963, and remained so for another 20 years. Starr sold the newspaper in 1977 to J. Vin Brenner, who named his son, Bill, as publisher. Starr was named editor-emeritus in 1983 and remained so until his death on July 12, 1984.
I met Baldwin once on Main Street in St. Helena. He had two cameras dangling around his neck, and he was interested in the camera I carried, a 35mm film Nikkormat, and we talked a little bit. Back then I was a young journalist starting my career as he was ending his. Today I wish I could have spent more time with him learning about St. Helena’s history from someone who lived it.
St. Helena Star history
The first edition was Sept. 25, 1874. Its publisher was Dewitt C. Lawrence, who left as publisher on Jan. 30, 1876.
In his last edition he wrote that his 16 months as publisher “will always linger in my mind as one of the happiest epochs of my editorial career. It is rarely the fortune of anyone to cast his lot in a community so agreeable and appreciative of his humble efforts, and I here return thanks to one and all.”
Publishers
After Lawrence, the Star’s publishers and/or editors were:
Charles Gardner, 1876-1884;
Willis Mackinder, 1884-1887;
Jesse Dungan/Frank Mackinder, 1887-1891;
Frank Mackinder, 1891-1937;
Lola Grace Mackinder, 1937-1963;
Edward Starr Baldwin, 1963-1983;
Bill Brenner, 1984-1997;
Paul Krsek, 1997-2002;
Rich Lofton, 2002-2003;
Pulitzer Publishing, Mario van Dongen, 2003-2005;
Lee Enterprises, Doug Ernst, 2004-2011, and editors Dave Stoneberg, 2011-2020, and Jesse Duarte, 2020 to present.
Signs of hope
What is the future for local newspapers? I don’t believe anyone knows. What we know for sure is that the revenue model for newspapers — the three-legged stool with advertising, subscriptions and single-copy street sales — is broken. It is expensive to buy ink and newsprint to create a newspaper and pay people to deliver it to front porches in the early morning hours. In today’s world newspaper publishers want people to sign up for their digital news and their e-edition, which looks like a newspaper but is an electronic one.
At the same time, people need their local news. What did the St. Helena City Council do last Tuesday night, did the Saints beat the Middletown Mustangs last Friday night and what is going on at the high school? These are all vital questions, not likely covered by other journalism outlets.
Newspapers are changing. In the future the “news” will be only online. It will be a sad day. I still like to read a newspaper, even though I read The New York Times online and work for an online-only news service.
Walking around downtown Middletown, near where Joni and I have lived since 1985, I can’t tell you how many people over the years tell me that they miss the Middletown Times-Star, a weekly newspaper that Joni and I owned until we sold it in 1986. After running it for some 20 years, the new owners shut it down, unable to make ends meet despite their best efforts.
But there’s hope. Last November, as Pat Hampton and Ramona Asmus, founders and owners of the Calistoga Tribune, sought to retire after 21 years – who would buy a local newspaper, even though it is beloved? – Highway 29 Media stepped up and bought both the Calistoga Tribune and the Yountville Sun, owned by Sharon Stensaas, who also wanted to retire. Helping Highway 29 acquire both newspapers was the Napa Valley Community Foundation, which gave Highway 29 some $450,000 for acquisition and upgrading both papers, their staffs and websites.
Chairman of the Highway 29 Media board is Yountville resident Marc Hand, who is co-founder and board chair for the National Trust for Local News; vice-chair is Larry Kamar, also of Yountville, of the Kamar Consulting Group.
And just last week Highway 29 Media acquired Paul Franson’s NapaLife to add to its portfolio. Franson, the influential publisher who began NapaLife in June 1998, joins the Highway 29 Media team. With this acquisition, Kamar said the company’s publications now cover the entire Napa Valley.
Another sign of hope is the Press Democrat’s latest efforts to cover news in the Napa Valley. I picked up a free copy of the Press Democrat at the Calistoga Roastery on a recent Sunday and was impressed with their 10-page section of Napa County-only news. This is in addition to their regular newspaper.
As for me, I’m a journalist who will continue to cover the Napa Valley community for as long as I can. Now more than ever, local news outlets need experienced and skilled journalists as we continue to tell the local stories and navigate the future. You can find my latest at NapaValleyFeatures.com.
Dave Stoneberg is an editor and journalist who has worked at newspapers in both Napa and Lake counties.
Dave, So glad you continue covering Napa Valley news!
Thanks Dave for a great article! Puts it into perspective the pickle we are in and the need for local news.