My Best "Bill-O The Clown"

Cutter's Log - Stardate 0102.30.60
Current Song - Tired of Being Alone (Al Green)


I get asked all of the time, "Do you make money on NISB?" The answer to that question is 'No.' I don't really need to make money on NISB. I do offer a way so that I could make money (through the story archive), but it doesn't get used. I don't get paid for writing pieces, traveling to games, or reimbursed for such things including hotel stays. Everything from NISB comes out of my own pocket.

I do this as a service to the northern Illinois high school sports community. My main task as I run the website is to inform. That's different from my counterparts on the print side of things.

A few years ago, a few newspapers experimented with charging for online content. SVN, the Ottawa Times, the BCR, and the Argus/Dispatch did this. It didn't work out too well for them, and they went back to posting things online for free.

This was before the days of severe cutbacks.

At one time a couple of years ago, each NISB-area newspaper was posting stories online for free. The LaSalle-News Tribune couldn't make up their mind over the past couple of years. There were times they charged for a full story, and times were they didn't charge for a full story.

Then about a year ago, the Kewanee Star-Courier began cutting back their online version of its stories to about the first 1/3rd. The Rochelle News-Leader began doing this, too. The first 1/4 of its stories are posted.

Ottawa Delivered, the new "rival publication" to the Times, ripped a page out of the Times' past playbook. Nothing is free on there anymore, unless you take a survey and are willing to recieve a bunch of junk mail in your Inbox.

The Morris Daily Herald took everything a step further last week. In order to read anything local, you need to pay. The national stuff is free game. The local stuff, not so fast. Oh wait, columns are free. Factual stories, not so fast. The process worked so well at Morris, that SVN is doing it too.

To read why Morris went to such a format, you'll need to read the story from April 27th. Unfortunately, you'll need to shell out an extra $2.50 to retrieve it because it is more than seven days old. You CAN read SVN's reason for going to this new format. Hurry up, because after this upcoming Saturday, you'll need to pay the $2.50. Shaw (SVN, MDH, BCR, DeKalb, NW Herald, KCC, yada yada yada), QC Online and the T-H archive all past recent stories. Gatehouse (Rockford, Freeport, Kewanee, Peoria, Chillicothe), the OT, N-T, Clinton Herald and QC Times has articles for free online, dating back to who knows when.

Some little things irk me.

The SVN and MDH articles (I happen to remember the MDH article) were written by writers. The writers interviewed their respective publishers. Apparently the publishers didn't want to stamp their name on the by-line.

I'm going to get some flack from those who read during the Grandon-era, but when I worked for SVN, albeit briefly, I considered Bill Shaw (who was then-publisher) a very great guy. Someone who was very involved with the newspaper business, from editorial to printing press. Someone who was very involved with the community. He was the fifth- or sixth-generation Shaw to run the Dixon paper. He even wrote on rare occasion, maybe three or four times a year.

Then came the current guy in charge. Half of the Sauk Valley couldn't recall his name without researching it. That wasn't the case with Bill SHAW. I'll give you a hint, his last name isn't Shaw.

I'm trying to imagine Johnson Oil without any family running the show. I don't think I'd want to go on any further. I'm recalling a comment I heard regarding the National transition from the Bittorfs and Bensons to Stanley Tools.

The point I'm trying to make is that a great sense of family involvement makes a business special. Maybe I'm biased: my great-grandfather, grandfather and father have all worked for Cutter Electric. The family business had helped out with Johnson Oil for nearly 25 years.

Everything changed when Bill left. It became more of a business than a family business. There was no more tradition left. No flow.