MGH Is Counting Down, Eagle Mine Road Is Ever Widening, and a College Preacher Is Spewing Hate

TWO WEEKS, MAYBE less. That's when we'll have a deal for the new Marquette General Hospital. That's when all the courting and numbers-crunching and speculating will finally end.

Two apparent candidates remain in the running for the nearly $300 million project--the Marquette Township site just behind the Westwood Mall, and the city of Marquette's Roundhouse site, on the western fringe of downtown.

The Township submitted its deal several weeks ago. Duke LifePoint, the owner of the hospital, seemed satisfied with it, and the two sides have not had substantial talks since then.

The city, on the other hand, has been having on-and-off chats with DLP in the last several weeks, but no one is characterizing those talks as negotiations. Just questions and answers.

Two weeks, maybe less. Then one of these municipalities will finally be able to  start a friendly and prosperous collaboration with Duke LifePoint.
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IT'S ABOUT TO happen. After a decade-long struggle, the Eagle Mine outside of Big Bay will begin harvesting billions of dollars of nickel and copper in the next couple of months.

Have you been out there lately? The road to the mine--510 and AAA--is a startling, ten mile long, 50-100 yard swath of denuded land. The Road Commission, which is constructing the roadway with $45 million from Lundin, concedes it's wider than necessary but says that was the wish of the property owners. They wanted the timber.

Okay. We get it. This whole project is about money.

Further, one official suggested that this gash across the landscape might actually help the wildlife in the spring because the cleared area will melt before the forest does and maybe provide some early vegetation for the hungry animals. Of course, the critters, while snacking, will have to dodge the huge ore trucks roaring past at 50 miles per hour.

Let's not kid ourselves, part one. The road and the mine will have an environmental impact on what was a pristine area. How serious will it be? We don't know. Let's hope it's something less than what the environmental groups have predicted.

They're the ones who publicized the leakage of groundwater into the Salmon Trout River a couple of weeks ago. That's their job from now on: they may have lost the war to stop the mine but they'll be maintaining a close watch on every move that Lundin and the Road Commission make. They'll be ringing the alarm bells if something goes awry.

We should be thankful for them. The mine and road are realities but maybe...just maybe, the environmental damage can be mitigated by an alert and enlightened citizenry, and by an extra-conscientious mining industry that may want to extend its welcome it in the U.P.

Let's not kid ourselves, part two. The mining companies know there's a lot more ore...and money...down there. At the end of the Eagle Mine's supposed eight year life (and likely before then), the companies will be flashing more cash and asking for an extended stay in the U.P.
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NO ONE SAID it would be easy.

The July TV ratings have come in, and WJMN, the new entrant in the local TV news wars, can't be all that thrilled.

In the coveted 25-54 age demographic, which matters most to advertisers, WBUP (ABC 10) had slightly higher ratings than WJMN. Fox UP, likewise had higher ratings for its 10 pm newscast.

What that means is that TV news viewers don't readily change their news habits, even when the new competitor--WJMN--has a known and capable anchor and news director in Cynthia Thompson, a solid anchor at 11 pm in Gabe Caggiano, and an established parent station out of Green Bay--WFRV.

It'll take time.

In case you're wondering, the runaway leader in the July ratings, of course, was again TV6. That's been the case for the last half century. Tradition is hard to overcome.

On the other hand, WBUP (ABC 10) continues to compile an impressive website showing with more than two million page views last month. Needless to say, a lot more people are reading their website than are watching their newscasts.
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THE OPENING DATE for The Marq, the new farm-to-table restaurant in Marquette, was supposed to be August...but here we are in September and they're not quite ready to serve. Not even close.

Three or four months out, businesspeople are always optimistic, but then personal, financial and governmental realities set in.

The new opening date for the Marq is November.

Drop by the site of the old Rubaiyat restaurant and you'll see plenty of construction underway inside and out. The restaurant's eight investors promise that they will not overspend on the re-do of the building, which was one apparent reason for the demise of the Rubaiyat.

The restaurant's space is being opened up, however, allowing more sunlight to flow in, and recycled woods and other materials uniquely treated are being used throughout the restaurant.The Marq is also setting up a full bar for drinkers and eating customers. The design is being handled by University Michigan architecture professors Adam Fure and Ellie Abrons.

Seventy-two seats total in the restaurant which will feature as much local produce and meat as Austin Fure, Adam's brother, a classically trained chef, can find. He says the menu will change regularly to reflect the fact that available produce in the U.P. necessarily changes.

Sounds like the right restaurant in the right place at the right time.

Expect hiring to start within a month.
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INCOMING NMU FRESHMEN last week quickly learned that college life is just a wee bit different from high school.

A traveling preacher out of Texas showed up on campus to noisily denounce fornication, pornography and blasphemy. He called some of the female students whores, told just about everybody they were going to hell unless they changed their ways, and saved some of his harshest words for a transgender student.

All in all, a swell couple of days of evangelism that was chronicled by NMU's North Wind newspaper.

The preacher, whose name is Chris LePelley, has apparently left town to spread the good word on other campuses. Nevertheless, some NMU students are now trying to start a group known as NMU Love. It'd be a way of saying we disagree with hate speech, biblical or otherwise.

That's fine. Or you can just ignore the hate-spewing, spotlight-loving clowns and let them shout their nonsense at the sky.

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

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Hospital Deadline, Golf Course Rejection, and Another Frigid Winter

 

WELL, HERE IT is, the end of August, the supposed deadline for a decision on the relocation of Marquette General Hospital, so it should happen this week, right?

Don't count on it, if the city's Roundhouse location is one of the two final candidates, which we hear it is.

The thing is, the City Commission's subcommittee on the hospital would have to approve a possible deal and then the City Commission as a whole would have to vote publicly on it before the city could assure Duke LifePoint that the deal is a go.

That's not likely to happen by the end of this week.

Now, if DLP has already decided it's selecting the Township site behind the Westwood Mall, that's a different story. It could happen this week.

But what we hear is that DLP is still having talks with the city over the Roundhouse site--questions answered, details clarified--while communications with the Township have been silent for about a month. That may mean DLP is totally satisfied with the Township offer while it's got doubts about the city's offer.

Or it may mean...

Oh hell, who knows what it means?
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IN CASE YOU'RE wondering why the Marquette Golf Club ended talks with Duke LifePoint a week ago, here's why.

The club, after building the highly acclaimed but financially taxing Greywalls course almost a decade ago, remains about four million dollars in debt. It's a tough nut to crack.

A substantial offer from DLP for half of the Heritage course could have solved the problem but DLP's offer was somewhere in the neighborhood of three million plus. After taxes and various costs, the club would have cleared maybe two million at most, probably less.

And they would have been left without a clubhouse and a pro shop. If they had rebuilt those and taken care of other maintenance issues, their remaining cash from the sale would barely have made a dent in their debt.

And they would have been saddled with a nine hole course and an eighteen hole course divided by a huge hospital complex which, for the next couple of years, would have been nothing more than an ugly, dusty construction zone.

Hardly a wise strategy to attract new golf club members.

What could Duke LifePoint have offered to change a few minds? "Ten million would have been a good number," according to one member, half jokingly. Or maybe not.
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THE TRIALS AND tribulations of ABC 10 continue.

News director and anchor Rick Tarsitano has left the Ishpeming-based station for a more lucrative position on Lake Michigan--Chicago's WGN.

Bigtime. Big station. And both Rick and his wife are from the Chicago area.

He'll be a sports producer there, not on the air for now, but don't rule that out in the future. He's a talent who provided some much needed stability at the chronically underfunded ABC 10.

"Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be TV journalists..."

Rick's had to walk a rocky path ever since he got into TV a few years back. He was hired as an off camera producer (for peanuts) at TV6 and struggled to get on the air, despite having a strong work ethic and obvious talent. He was frustrated. Then he was explicably canned.

Then, he caught on as a reporter at ABC10 (for fewer peanuts)...at one point considered going back to TV6...then with the departure of ABC 10's news director Cynthia Thompson, he found himself appointed the new news director and anchor and who-knows-what-else (for a few more peanuts).

And now, less than a year into his tenure, he's off to Chicago in an entirely different role.

Ya gotta be flexible as a TV journalist. And willing to live on peanuts. Small market TV does not lead to riches.

Meantime, ABC 10, the little engine that could, will continue to chug forward. A new news director and anchor have yet to be named.
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AS IF POWERHOUSE TV 6 needed any more advantages...

The Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns TV6, recently announced that it's also taken ownership of WLUK in Green Bay. Yeah, the same WLUK that used to broadcast Fox programming and Green Bay Packer games in the UP.

None of that will change because Fox UP (also owned by Sinclair) now has rights to that, but the ownership change is significant because now the news departments of TV6 and Fox UP will be able to readily trade stories with WLUK. Together, they'll be offering blanket coverage of the UP-Green Bay region.

The rich get richer.
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BY NOW WE'VE all heard the dismaying news that this upcoming winter may be as bitterly cold as last winter. So says the Farmer's Almanac which claims an 80% accuracy rate.

So what says local weather guru Karl Bohnak? Surely, he'll dispel such nonsense.

Well, as a matter of fact...no.

He says water patterns in the Pacific Ocean point toward a cold winter. Looks like we'll have a weak El Nino which also lends itself to a cold winter.

There is a greater likelihood of an eastern US-based frigid winter, rather than a Midwest-based freeze, but here in the U.P, we're still likely to feel it.

Bohnak reminds us that we had a frigid winter in '95-'96, and that was followed by record-breaking cold in '96-'97, so there's precedent for this.

Swell.

One ray of sunshine here: September should be an average month, maybe even a bit warmer and sunnier than average.

Woohoo. Let's throw a beach party just before we head down to Getz's to buy our mittens and swampers.

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

 

If you want to receive Word on the Street as soon as it's posted, go to Word on the Street by Brian Cabell on Facebook, and "like" it.

 

Mining Journal Legal Threat, TV Ratings, Co-op's New Tenants, and Yooper Wine

 

David versus Goliath. New media versus old media. Marquette Social Scene versus the Mining Journal.

A classic battle is brewing here in Marquette. Or maybe it's more of a skirmish.

In any case, it's got the Mining Journal threatening to take some guerrilla journalists to court.

What started it all was the Mining Journal's recent decision to erect a paywall on its website. If you want to get news online from the Mining Journal, you now have to pay for it.

Not all that unusual. Newspapers across the country are doing it. At a time when hard copy circulation is declining (and the Mining Journal concedes this), it's a way to make money.

Well, Marquette Social Scene, a young, digital upstart that covers news, sports and entertainment, wasn't thrilled with the new paywall. Brice Burge, the owner and editor of Marquette Social Scene, considers it a violation of public trust. He's an idealist. He believes newspapers should be available to everybody so that we can be enlightened about the world around us.

So...(and this is where the skirmish started)...Burge re-published in Marquette Social Scene a posting from a reader on the Mining Journal's Facebook page that told other readers how to work around the paywall.

Talk about irony. The newspaper's own Facebook page was telling readers how to get the news product for free.

When Burge re-published the posting, the Mining Journal wasn't pleased. Publisher Jim Reevs sent Burge a cease-and-desist order, claiming that he was promoting an illegal activity, and threatening legal action if the posting wasn't taken down.

So far Burge isn't budging.

One thing seems eminently clear. The Mining Journal needs to start monitoring its own Facebook page more carefully. Its failure to do so is what created the problem.

Second and more important is this. The new, hyperlocal, digital media--Marquette Social Scene, UP Second Wave, Marquette Magazine, Marquette Music Scene and Word on the Street--are here to stay. Some will die, some will grow, many will evolve, but as a means of gathering and distributing the news, they will play an increasingly vital role in our lives.

And the dinosaurs--the Mining Journal and the TV stations--will have to adapt (with more robust websites and social media involvement) or die. Cease-and-desist orders can only delay the inevitable.
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Speaking of TV stations, the latest Nielsen ratings are out, and they spell  good news for TV6. The longtime news leader here reasserted its overwhelming dominance at 6 pm after a serious drop in ratings last May.

The 11 pm ratings, which depend more heavily on the prime time offerings of the networks, were a little more competitive, with the new WJMN newscast posting decent numbers, but TV6 is still the unquestioned leader.

WJMN debuted its UP newscasts just a couple of months ago. It'll take some time for the station to become truly relevant. You don't overcome 50 years of dominance in just a ratings book or two.

As for ABC10, it keeps plugging along. Underfunded and underresourced, it produces solid newscasts at 5:30 and 10 pm and a substantive website with continual social media interaction. One of the station's most obvious flaws, a news set that looks like it was hastily assembled in someone's back office, will soon thankfully be history. The station is getting a new "virtual" set within a couple of months.

What does "virtual" mean? It means it'll look like things are there on the set when they really aren't. Electronic tricks. Slick. Sportscenter on ESPN employs a virtual set.

Also in from ABC 10: Al Jazeera America has requested that the station send them a long form story on the Bobby Glenn Brown story. Brown, of course, is the local man who recently took part in  a commitment ceremony with his longtime partner, and was subsequently told by St. Michaels Catholic Church he could no longer take part in the ministry of the church.

The story's gotten some national play. Now Al Jazeera America wants to do something with it.
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If you've been wondering what's going to happen at the site of the old Food Co-op, here's a partial answer.

GEI Consultants, a nationwide engineering firm that's currently located on Washington Street, is taking over half of the downstairs space and all of the upstairs space.

Upstairs will house the GEI offices while the downstairs is set aside for a soils and materials lab. A wall has already been erected downstairs, splitting the space. No word yet on who may move into the other half.

GEI works with the mines, government agencies and businesses. They employ 15 people here. The employees should be moving in to their new digs on about July 10th.
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The Marquette Farmers Market has been kind to the St. Charles Winery.

Marquette's only winery moved into the Farmers Market for the first time this season, and sales are already up 30%.

In fact, owner Randy St. Charles says he and his wife Lisa are struggling to keep up with the sudden surge in demand. Production has more than doubled since they took over the winery nine months ago.

They offer between 20 and 30 wines--like watermelon and mandarin orange as well as the more traditional chardonnay and pinot noir--at prices ranging from $13 to $25 a bottle.

Of course, the grapes don't come from the UP. They arrive in concentrate form from Central California and then they're processed, with Lake Superior water and flavoring, by St. Charles at his shop on Washington Street.

It's in a second floor office, next to an insurance agency, across the street from McDonalds. Not exactly the lush, rolling hills of Napa Valley.

But they have a wine-tasting room on site where they welcome individual wine enthusiasts and host small events and parties.

It's a start. And it's classic UP, devoid of pretension and driven by energy and enthusiasm.


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

CBS Newscasts Start Next Month

Well, they're getting closer.

WJMN, the CBS station in the Upper Peninsula, has announced it'll be starting its first-ever UP newscasts in April.

April 1st? April 10th? April 30th?

Don't pin them down. They're still trying to hammer together a studio and offices off the highway west of Marquette. They're referring to it as WJMN-TV Plaza, a bit grandiose perhaps when you consider that its actually a triple unit at a strip plaza across the street from a gas station.

Still, it's exciting for UP news viewers. Nexstar Broadcasting, which owns WJMN, is a serious broadcasting conglomerate with 74 stations nationwide. They're clearly hoping to make a dent in the domination of WLUC in this market. They'll also be taking on ABC-10 which has also been showing signs of life in the last couple of years.

Cynthia Thompson, who's worked at both ABC-10 and WLUC, is the new news director at WJMN. She's in the process of hiring her staff.

The station will be offering only Monday through Friday newscasts at 6 and 11, at least initially.

While the construction and the hiring continues, the branding is complete: WJMN will now be known as "Local 3." Kinda catchy it although it's not as cuddly as "Someplace Special."

Asplund Takes the Reins, Marquette Mountain Takes a Plunge, and StoryCorps Comes to Town

A relative calm has descended upon the newsroom at WLUC.

Steve Asplund, the hardest working man in the news business, has been named the news director at the station. Rather, re-named. He was news director for a few years back in the mid-90's, as well.

And don't worry, he'll remain as the 6 pm anchor. What most viewers don't realize is that Asplund's most important work has always been done off-camera, as assignment editor, producer, writer, photographer, editor, fill-in engineer, snow plow operator. Hell, if TV6 had a cow out back, Asplund would be milking that in his spare time.

He works 70-80 hours a week. No lie. He loves his work, he loves the station.

That's why it was almost criminal what he had to endure for the last two years during the tenure of the former news director, Regena Robinson. For some reason, Robinson locked Asplund, the assistant news director, out of the entire decision-making process in the news department. The hostility was palpable.

Maybe it was a personality clash. Regardless, it was a waste of Asplund's skills and enthusiasm, and it made for a very uncomfortable newsroom because Asplund was universally liked and respected by both the veterans and the youngsters in the news department.

But he kept his head down, worked his 70-80 hours a week, and now he's got the job he deserves. WLUC is the better for it.

(Full disclosure: I was the WLUC news director from 2004-2011)
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Meantime, a former TV6er, Rick Tarsitano, who was surprisingly terminated by Robinson a year ago, is in negotiations to become the new news director at ABC10.

He's been a reporter at ABC10 for the last year, but in the wake of Cynthia Thompson's resignation as ND, Tarsitano was appointed interim news director and has done a creditable job. Now management wants to make him the permanent news director.

No one could quite figure out why he was forced out at TV6. Another personality clash? The fact was, Tarsitano was one of the most talented reporters in Marquette when he was let go.

Now we're going to see what kind of management skills he has. He'll be facing a stiff challenge: ABC10 doesn't have nearly the money or resources that WLUC has, and it'll be facing a brand new competitor when WJMN starts its UP newscast in the next month or so.

And who is WJMN's news director and anchor? That's right, Cynthia Thompson, formerly of both ABC10 and TV6. TV news in the Upper Peninsula is a never-ending merry-go-round.
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It's been a weird season at Marquette Mountain.

The best snow in years and yet the numbers are down. Way down.
Vern Barber, the GM, figures the mountain has attracted almost 30% fewer skiers and snowboarders this season.

Go ahead, take a guess why.

Yep, it's too freaking cold even for skiers. When you consider that the thermometer has climbed above 30 degrees for only a few days in the last three months, and has generally stayed below 10 degrees, it's easy to understand why we've stayed off the mountain.

The only thing that's kept Marquette Mountain afloat this season has been its ever-expanding race schedule. Teams, young and old, come here from all over the Midwest to race. And unlike the casual skiers, the racers don't have a choice; even if it's minus 10 and the wind is howling, they're going to be racing (and spending money in Marquette) because they've already registered and paid the fees.

Barber says this is the coldest winter he's experienced in his 32 years on Marquette Mountain. Sounds about right.
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You got a great story to tell?

You'll get your opportunity to tell it and preserve it for posterity when National Public Radio's StoryCorps trailer rolls into town this July.

StoryCorps brings people together--parent and child, brother and sister, friends, teacher and student, neighbors-- to sit down and tell their stories.
It might be a childhood memory, it might be a hunting story, it might be something traumatic.

But the stories are usually evocative, poignant and fascinating.

StoryCorps is hoping to find 200 such stories in the U.P. A couple of them will likely end up being broadcast on NPR nationwide. The rest will be taped and stored at the Library of Congress. They'll become a part of this nation's history.That's pretty cool.

Participants will also be given a copy of the interview--something to hand down to your grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Public Radio 90 will be announcing in the next couple of months how you can sign up for StoryCorps.

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

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

'Money in the Ground' reviewed

I'm happy to report that "Money in the Ground" got a nice review in the February issue of Marquette Monthly.

Click here and you can link to it.

I'm still getting the word out about the novel and hoping more of the newspapers in the UP will do write-ups on it.

Next up is probably a signing or two at the local book stores. That makes me a little uncomfortable because it seems awfully presumptuous, but what the heck, I do what I'm told.

By the way, I have another blog in my role as news director at WLUC. You can link up to that by clicking here .