I’d suggest Stel Kline could find work out in Kadoka, but the Kadoka Press isn’t hiring or printing anymore. After begging for someone, anyone, to move to Kadoka and report on Jackson County, Ravellette Publications got no takers. Thus the Kadoka Press dies after 115 years. Kadokans will now find their news tucked into a section of the Philip Pioneer Review.
Publisher Don Ravellette, whose dad Les got sued for drilling a hole in the bathroom wall of his Wall newspaper office and spying on his female employees, blames lazy bums for not wanting to do an honest day’s work:
These past few years have been challenging for everyone in every facet of business. Even before the pandemic we had a work force issue. Since the pandemic, we have some of the former work force not wanting to step back into the working world. The last couple years of the pandemic has given more reasons for adults and youth, to not hold a full or part time job. Stay at home and live off others, has been the norm for some of our country’s former work force. “I can make more money staying at home, then I could ever make working at my job.” I have actually heard that too many times. What have we created here? We have created a very bad work ethic that has been the reason for many partial and permanent shut downs. We have the need for many more workers on the job than are actually coming forward. Where have they gone and what are they doing?
Many business owners have been forced to cut their services or fill only a portion of their tables because of a lack of servers at restaurants. Some businesses have had to open their seasonal tourist businesses a month late, or not at all, due to the lack of workers. Some have had to shut down their businesses totally due to the lack of work force, like the Kadoka Press. I know we are not alone. Do those in business have it easy? I don’t think so! Small business ownership is tough, but it is the livelihood of every community. It takes guts to own and run a business. We have to bring back the guts to our workforce and our youth, or this situation is going to continue.
Please keep supporting your local business trade. Work if you can, even part time workers are needed. If you are able, consider going out and helping a local business keep their doors open, or they will close. I ask that you be responsible, and work for a living. Enjoy the things that you worked hard for, and take pride in it [Don Ravellette, “A Sad Good Bye to the Kadoka Press Newspaper,” Kadoka Press, 2022.04.13].
Sure, Don. And remind us: how much were you offering to pay a reporter to keep the Kadoka paper open?
People don’t want to, nor can they afford to work for peanuts. Try paying a decent wage. But is it so much more satisfying to bitch that people are lazy. Maybe if you produced a better product more people would want to read and buy it and you could afford to pay the help.
Republican former State Senator Stan Adelstein’s ancestors owned a store in Kadoka, adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation; now he’s vested in numerous mining interests from gold to gravel on stolen treaty lands. Richard Boyden linked early Jewish settlement in western South Dakota to the subjugation of American Indians at the time of statehood and the massacre at Wounded Knee.
In 1991 I was the Sysco rep who supplied the entire cast and crew of Thunderheart with fresh fish, full grocery supplies and other goodies. Coast to Coast Catering rented an inactive but well-equipped restaurant in Kadoka owned by the family that operates Discount Fuel. I drove out there from Rapid City in a refrigerated truck nearly every day during filming and Coast to Coast Catering spent almost $500,000 with me. Graham Greene gave me his autograph on the back of one of my business cards.
There is no news in any of these papers other than school news. They only publish city and county budgets, along with the weekly lies from Thune, Dirty, EB5 Rounds, Ma NOem and any of the other fascists.
Kadoka, Philip, Interior, Belvidere, Cottonwood and Wall would all be better served with publishing their own budgets, along with city and county minutes on line to comply with the transparency laws. The good news would be that you wouldn’t have to buy newsprint from a MAGA to read what should be free. Hire some cool cat who knows how to use a computer and let’r rip. Ol’ Don is letting his red arse show with his drivel about blaming the working folk for his own shortcomings in the pay department.
His screed is pocked with errors a first-year copy editor would fix, which says a lot. Yes, owning and running a weekly paper is rough. I have managed weekly newsrooms for years. But the good ones — dedicated to local news, well-reported and produced — not only survive, they thrive.
It takes an owner/publisher willing to invest in it. A former editor told me three decades ago that he informed his boss that he would produce a quality newspaper every week — if the company would give him the budget and staff to do it.
I often compare a newspaper to a bakery: Provide customers with something hot, fresh and inviting and they will keep you in business. Shovel out stale, unappetizing material and you will close your doors. It appears that was the fate for the Kadoka Press, and that is indeed a damned shame.
Jewish settlement in western South Dakota, mirrored other Eastern and Mid Eastern settlement in South Dakota. Two families, of Mid Eastern descendants, did pretty well on treaty lands as both landed their sons in Washington. D. C., one as a Democrat and one as a Republican in state wide elections.
Kadoka had Indian issues before and long after the Adelstein family left Kadoka. https://www.history.com/topics/russia/pogroms
From VOX today…..https://www.vox.com/features/23013380/work-is-broken-can-we-fix-it
Apparently guts, not bucks drives small business. Not even monkeys will work for peanuts. Although…it is fun to read the lying screed of Laziness that most Republicans use to address virtually everything. Intellectually lazy of them isn’t it? Just ask Grudz.
One of the best jobs in my life was working at a small bi-weekly that became a weekly newspaper. I worked 80 hour weeks making little money. It was a killer of a job, but it was a lot of fun. I could only keep that work schedule up for a year and a half. Got the ax after a disagreement about a story I was working on. If I were still in South Dakota, and younger, I would have considered working there
Well…Donald…I guess you should count your blessings for not being young…I don’t think you’d last long in Kadoka, and either would I. I agree with Tom Lawrence that the closing of a newspaper in a county seat town is a tragedy….there are plenty of lively, very readable weeklies in South Dakota and I hope they can continue. My grandfather Ed Oddy, was twice president of the South Dakota Press Association while serving as publisher and editor of a weekly in a county seat town…at that time (20’s through 50’s) there were well over 100 weekly papers published in South Dakota. Bob Karolevitz book “A Shirttail Full of Type” gives us the History of the small town press in South Dakota.
There, if only for more youth, could have been Mr. Pay as publisher, and grudznick as the roving investigative reporter, being driven around by a fellow in a dapper hat. We’d have opened the entire can of transparency on the Counties of Jones, Jackson, Mellette and Haakon. Ms. Angela would drool over our prowess at the reporting.
Somebody still trying to spew the BS that people get more money by not working. How many months ago did that extra unemployment benefit end? But when you can spew that BS and people believe it, you keep spewing the BS. With an employer’s attitude like this, maybe the problem is the employer. Remember the old saying when you point your finger at others, there are 3 fingers pointing back at you.
One of the first things I was told when I went into sales was to stay out of politics. Keep my political believes to myself. I see so many businesses and businesspeople involved in politics today, some to the point of having political signs in their businesses.
Interesting to see this story and also the story about a SDPB employee being fired. We all need to understand that not everyone has the same believes as us and, that no one is right all the time. Accepts others if they are different, be it political, religious, clothes, hair or whatever the difference.
Why in the world does Ravellette have to take what could have been a nice farewell piece and make it political and blame others? I am guessing the fact that fewer and fewer want to live in Kadoka has something to do with this. If there were people there who had more pride in their community, then this wouldn’t be an issue (no pun intended). I can tell you that even 10 years ago, running one of the largest weekly newspapers in the state from my basement was entirely possible, so even in these times where people want to stay home, according to Ravellette, it should have been really easy to find someone to do this job. Going out to meetings, sporting events, et. al. is the fun stuff, the work of writing, layout, making phone calls can easily be done from home. My guess is the Kadoka paper did not bring in a lot of money, so he couldn’t afford to pay a lot of money, and it was best to close it. If he offered enough money, someone would have taken the job. But I am sure that would have meant taking revenue from some of his other papers in order to do that. That would have been his business decision to make, but it is way beneath him to blame people’s “work ethic,” because he couldn’t keep his business afloat. With this closure, if the desire is there to really have a local paper, then some fine Kadoka residents will start up a new newspaper in the near future.
Well put, Scott. Hope to read more of your opinions, often.
Indeed, I have never found myself making more money not working than working.
Newspapermen Dave and Tom make good points. As Dave notes, the Kadoka publisher spoils a sad but historic moment with bitter and baseless blamethrowing that misses the fundamental economic truths: the Kadoka paper apparently lacked the audience and the advertising base to support paying a reporter what a reporter is worth, not to mention the premium necessary to get that worthy reporter to come live in Kadoka. (Evidently among all those Freedom™-hounds Kristi Noem has been recruiting, there aren’t many writers willing to work for peanuts 100 miles from the nearest airport or Target.) And as Tom notes with his apt analogy to bakeries, publishers can stay afloat by offering customers “hot, fresh, and inviting” material. Reporters also want the opportunity to produce hot, fresh, and inviting text, stuff people want to read. If reporters didn’t want the job in Kadoka, that suggests Ravellette wasn’t offering an opportunity to write good material that lots of people would read. And we writers want to be read.