POSTMORTEM: The Big Contradiction that Unraveled Tucson’s RedStar Newspaper

Arizona Daily Star front page

For those of you who haven’t heard, the managing half-owners of this daily Leftist screed, LEE Enterprises of Davenport Iowa, were finally compelled by a combination of forces to essentially gut their Tucson news rag. 

The end came swiftly April 24th, as what was left of most of the newsroom was sent to the unemployment line, including numerous high-level decision makers, policy wonks & wonkettes.  The apparent reasons given, i.e. competition from other digital media, printing costs, internal & physical overhead costs, distribution costs, etc. etc. were all in line with standard Orwellian ‘newspeak’.

Yet, I submit there was a deeply embedded, underlying causality—one that, as these other ancillary reasons got more onerous & costly, surfaced again & again as something that just couldn’t be addressed.   And this other causality goes to the heart of Tucson…the urbanity founded in 1775, and how it is trying to grow organically today.

At its very core the RedStar, founded in 1877 by Arizona’s [first impeached], Hard-Left territorial governor, L.C. Hughes, as his personal political tool, was essentially anti-growth.  Yet, growth, i.e. including the sale of news advertizing, etc. is what pays the lion’s share of the operating $$$ freight.  A basic recognition weirdly absent from the Star’s Leftist, UA J-school grads who routinely railed against the evils of capitalism.  Yet, for the longest while, this was the manageable part of what I term the ‘big contradiction’.

As long as the world saw university towns (like Tucson) in somekind of urbanized Goodbye Mr. Chips role, the quaint, undemanding domain of cerebral training & debate, everything was hunky-dory.

But that’s not true anymore; cities with major, flagship universities are now seen as economic & technological force-multipliers; this is what Wall Street has figured out about LEE Enterprises and their M.O. of running newspapers in such collegial places.

Their goofy, Woke biz-model of being Hard-Left bastions of boo-hoo, touchie-feelie, no-growth Liberalism is in diametric opposition to where the world WANTS TO INVEST.  The world [very much] wants to invest in academic cities like Boulder, Austin, Raleigh, SLC, Provo, Boise, etc. …even Tucson! 

Wall Street: “So why does your newspaper’s basic business model eschew anything growth related, and champion all those nutty local policies, political dirtbags, and incompetent-corrupt nincompoops that keeps the place poor? …and prevents you from selling more advertizing?”

It’s my BIG CONTRADICTION and the basic reason LEE’s corporate stock is in the toilet, with the very real possibility of a court-ordered, company vivisection into multiple pieces if a 3rd bankruptcy happens.

There’s also a serious lesson here for Tucson’s elite SALC group, the erstwhile, supposed pro-business Southern Arizona Leadership Council.  Having been established more than a quarter century ago, their track record is pretty marginal, given the overwhelming data on Tucson’s economic retardation & poverty.

So heads-up SALC, the RedStar has been defanged, you can come out of the P.R. worry-closet and start living up to your charter.  All your ineffectual socialites, do-gooder heiresses, nonprofit bureaucrats, educrats, and crafty legal-beagles can show us your stuff.  For instance, your capable director, General Ted Maxwell, is the “subject matter expert” and a key link to transportation issues here that badly need addressing.

And let’s not forget the colossal [state-funded] asset that’s not doing a damn thing for Tucson’s broader economy, other than being its own ‘gubbmint jobs’ scheme and ubiquitous retail employment agency, city-wide, i.e. the University of Arizona.

Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization

About Bill Sellers 105 Articles
Sellers is a South Park Republican who lives in incorporated Oro Valley. His background is federal tech-transfer commercialization. Contact him at readbill19@usa.net Sellers is also a grad of Clemson's Architecture School and the University of NC School of Business. He was a founding member of the Albuquerque Friday Morning Breakfast Group which elected numerous conservatives. He has lived in the SouthWest & PacNorthWest more than 40 yrs.