By Jim Magdefrau

“It’s a way to preserve a way of life that one knew and loved.”

“I’ll have to be loyal to the old ways and die out with them if needs must … There’s more to life than money.”

During my annual viewing of Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” that phrase from Mister Fezziwig hit my ear drums like a gong. A little too close to home. His reason to stay in the business of accounting perhaps is what most publishers felt during the changes in the newspaper business.

Well, with that cheerful beginning, I look back on the retirement of the actual “Star Press Union.” It’s tough to see it go. It’s tough to see it change, but everything has changed. The paper is a combination of several newspapers. The Star. The Press. The Union. The Union itself is a combination of Belle Plaine papers. 

I’m reminded of the thoughts from a former newspaper association director who was a pall bearer at a former publisher’s funeral. They made a point of driving throughout the town, pointing at parks, schools, a hospital and other proud aspects of that local community. A local person told the director that if it wasn’t for the publisher and the paper, those things would never have happened.

So sure. The business has changed. It’s gone online. We’ve gone from over 90 employees to one. About seven offices to one. But it’s not the paper, office or personnel that make a difference. It’s the contribution the paper has provided  to make their community better informed. The medium might have changed, but the purpose is still there. 

It’s tough to close the books on something that my father helped to form, but I take pride in what the paper has contributed to the community. The effort now shifts to coverage to the regional paper, “The Current.”

And as long as I’m around, I hope to keep that going.

As they said in that movie, “We do but turn another page.”