Website on a Roll, Cliffs on a Roller Coaster, and Snowboarders on a Rail

The folks at WLUC have certainly shown their muscles in the last month.

Total page views on their website in January: 7.7 million. That's about 250,000 a day. Back in 2004, the same website was getting 250,000 a month.

A 30-fold increase in ten years. Yeah, that's pretty good growth.

A couple of caveats here: Last month's total exceeded the previous record by about three million, and it was inflated by the cold weather and the school cancellations.

But still.

How's that compare to the other major online news source in this region, the Mining Journal? Hard to tell, hard to find an apples-to-apples comparison, and the editor didn't return a call to discuss the issue.

But anybody who's observed the two websites recently can't help but conclude that WLUC's site is more robust and more current than the Mining Journal's. The Mining Journal's website sometimes goes unchanged for hours or even longer; you get the impression that someone's gone home and turned the lights out.

What the newspaper does have, on the other hand, is longer, more comprehensive, and frequently more insightful stories than the TV station's site. John Pepin, in particular, will give you stories with information you won't find anywhere else.

And when was the last time you read a genuine investigative piece on wluctv6.com? Go ahead, keep thinking. It'll take a while.

The bottom line, though, is this. WLUC is taking its web platform seriously; the Mining Journal, it seems, is not. The newspaper seems to regard its website as an inconvenient appendage to its core product, the actual "paper."

If you've studied the recent history of newspaper circulation and broadcast news ratings--in contrast to the explosive growth of online news consumption--you can't help but conclude that TV stations and newspapers need to massively redirect their resources to their online product soon, like yesterday.

If not, they're going to slowly slide into irrelevance and obsolescence. Ask yourself, how many of today's 20-year-olds are suddenly going to wake up when they're 30 or 40 and say, "Yeah, I think I'll order a subscription to the Mining Journal and have it delivered to my home at 2 in the afternoon! Great idea!"

None of them will. They'll be getting their news on their iPads, their cellphones and their laptops, or whatever new gadget the tech wizards have designed by then.

(Full disclosure: I was the news director at WLUC from 2004-2011.)
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It's been a roller coaster week for our hometown mining company.

Maybe you haven't heard but there's been a hostile takeover attempt underway at Cliff's Natural Resources. Casablanca Capital, an activist hedge fund that owns about five percent of Cliffs, isn't happy with the company's performance, its dividends or its plans for the future.

In fact, Casablanca wants Cliffs to spin off its international businesses. It also nominated its own candidate for CEO who eventually lost to the company's candidate, Gary Halverson.

But the takeover attempt remains alive.

Meantime, Cliffs laid off 500 employees in Canada and cut its capital spending by $425 million. Sounds bad.

But then the company just reported that profits and revenues are up. That's good.

Then again, the stock price is still languishing around $23 a share. That's bad (especially for us stock wizards who jumped in at $78, $57 and $35 a share).

However, the price has been rising in recent days. That's good.

Halverson, the new CEO, will be in Marquette next month, to explain it all.
Suggested bullet points for his speech:
     "We've gone through some tough times."
     "We're turning it around."
     "The long term future looks good."
     "Oh, sorry about having to close the Empire mine."
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If you're looking to sell your million dollar home in Marquette or the surrounding townships, good luck.

Appraiser Bruce Closser, who spends his time compiling such statistics, tells us no home here sold for over a million dollars last year. In fact, none sold for over $700,000.

Only about a dozen, he reports, sold for over $400,000.

Seems a little surprising. We get the impression sometimes that big money is discovering Marquette. Apparently, not yet.

That's not to say there aren't million dollar homes out there. They just haven't been listed by a realtor and sold for that amount in the last year.

Average price for a home here is $165,000 which is actually more than the average in Green Bay, Lansing and Detroit (where you can buy a home for a shiny nickel and a cup of coffee).

What lies ahead for the real estate market in Marquette? Slow but steady growth, between zero and six percent a year, according to Closser. You won't get rich in residential real estate here but you won't go broke, either.

Update: Huey Real Estate, which specializes in high dollar properties and is not listed on the Multiple Listing Service, sold a home on Lake Superior and the Little Garlic River for $1.1 million in December.
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If you missed it, last weekend was classic Marquette.

The 19th century met the 21st century, all within 24 hours. Sled dog racing with the UP 200 and the Midnight Run on Friday night, and then a snowboarding and skiing competition in the Downtown Showdown Saturday evening. All  in the heart of downtown.

A great show, a wonderful showcase for Marquette in the middle of winter. And yeah, it was cold, like 5 degrees, which kept the crowds down, but if you love winter and you love spectacles, you couldn't have found a better place on earth (except maybe for Sochi).

On Saturday, in an outside VIP bar at Range Bank, they were serving ice cold beer to scores of satisfied customers. Only in the U.P.

All the events were a tribute to the volunteers and merchants who spent countless hours and thousands of dollars making the weekend happen.

By the way, there's a good chance the Downtown Showdown will be extended an extra block next year, allowing the skiers and snowboarders to start their run at the Landmark Inn, and then turning left and finishing at the bottom of Washington Street.

More speed, more fun, and hopefully a few more degrees in temperature.


You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com

UP 200 Is Looking for Dogs, Thompson Has a New Job, and Buck's Back

 

Bonanza Steakhouse, one of Marquette's most popular restaurants for the last couple of decades, is shutting down this weekend.  

 

A manager at the restaurant Friday afternoon would only confirm that employees had been told Sunday would be their last day of work. Economic reasons brought about the shutdown.

 

The announcement comes on the heels of two other well-regarded businesses announcing last week that they, too, are shutting down--Penneys at the Westwood Mall and Farmer Q's downtown.

 

Two things seem clear. The economy here is still anything but robust. And operating any business is tough even when customers like your products and your service.   

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The UP 200, one of Marquette's signature events, is shrinking.

With three weeks before the sled dog race, only nine mushers have officially committed to it. Five others might join them, and race officials are searching for others.

Last year there were seventeen entrants. Just a few years ago, the numbers were in the high twenties and low thirties.

So what's happening?

For one, there's competition from races in Duluth, Newberry and the Keweenaw. For another, the prize money--$34,000 total for both the UP 200 and the Midnight Run--isn't turning many mushers' heads, though the money is comparable to other races, if not better.

Pat Torreano, who heads up the sled dog association here, points to a few other factors:

1) The economy. Sled dog racing is an expensive hobby. Tons of dog food, sometimes exorbitant vet bills. You might have noticed that very few hedge fund CEO's and Internet billionaires are into mushing.

2) Some of the veteran mushers are getting old. It's tough work to drive a dog team 250 miles through the snow and cold.

3) The younger mushers are more into "party racing." That's what Torreano calls it. Those are races run in stages, thirty or forty miles at a time, then you stop, rest for the night with great food and accommodations (maybe a drink or two), then get up, refreshed, the next morning for the next stage. That's a far cry from driving a team 125 miles through the snow and cold, then collapsing in exhaustion, only to get up and do it all over again.

The UP 200 may be at a crossroads. Even Torreano admits it may have to change.

She and Marquette city officials aren't panicking yet but they're concerned. The crowds still love the race (we can cheer and ring our cowbells for ten minutes, then duck inside for a cozy dinner), but the mushers not so much.

This year's UP 200 is February 14th, Valentine's Day.
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The public announcement hasn't been made yet but Cynthia Thompson will be the new news director and 6 pm anchor for WJMN.

WJMN, a CBS affiliate, will launch its first ever newscasts in the UP within a couple of months.

Thompson recently resigned as ND and anchor at ABC 10 and a couple of decades ago, she anchored the news at WLUC. She knows the UP, she knows news, she's "old school" which means she cares more about actual news events and proper writing than she does about social media.

Whoa. Could be a trend.
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The investigation into the racist letters received by TV 6 is still open, according to the State Police. Whether the letters actually contained specific threats against the former news director, Regena Robinson, and other members of her staff, is unclear. In any case, no arrests yet and no one's talking.

Meantime, the bigwigs from the station's new owner, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, were in town this week.

Of course, it was a rah-rah session, but many staffers came away impressed. Sinclair seems to genuinely care about news (though with a distinctly conservative bent) and it has plenty of experience running small market TV stations.

A new morning co-host, Sam Bauman, also made his debut alongside Vicky Crystal and Shawn Householder. Bauman's 23, out of Granville, Ohio, and a graduate of Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia.

He's getting acclimated. He finds the weather cold and the people warm.

Yeah, that's just about right.
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Buck Levasseur, the creator and star of Discovering, has had a tough couple of years.

Like debilitating back pain, four back surgeries, five months in a nursing home, loss of his job and loss of a lifestyle that he loved.

Well, he's still around and living at home in Skandia but now he uses a walker, a cane or one of those motorized chairs. Thirty-two years of lugging a thirty pound camera and a fifteen pound tripod through the wilds of the UP will do that to you.

You want to see him and thank him for his decades of bringing the great outdoors to us on TV? He'll be at the Marquette Regional History Center's fundraiser at Kaufman Auditorium on January 30th. Jack Deo will present a tribute to him.

You want to help Buck with his enormous medical bills? UP Whitetails Association is holding a raffle for him. Phenomenal prizes.

Buck's not really depressed, by the way. He misses his old life, but he's still got his memories and his friends. And they've all got stories that could take you well into the night.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com