Don Lehman: Why Local Media & Journalism Still Matter | Buying Local #86

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;18;27
Speaker 2
Welcome everyone to buying local. I’m your host, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media. Joined today by Don lemon. And done that. Right. So I don’t, give you an improper introduction. Why don’t, just take a couple of minutes and just, give our audience a little bit about who you are and what you’re up to these days.

00;00;19;00 – 00;00;41;07
Speaker 1
Well, right now, I work as director of public affairs for Warren County, a job I started in 2020. And that was shortly before the pandemic started. So that wasn’t maybe the best time to, be the, the public information person for a county that had to kind of oversee the Covid, you know, response in New York State.

00;00;41;10 – 00;01;00;22
Speaker 1
You know, the state kind of dropped it all in the county’s labs and said, hey, you guys are in charge of what happens in your counties with obviously oversight from the state. So I think at that point, I counted, 657 straight days of doing Covid type work, of just dealing with all the help in public health out basically.

00;01;00;22 – 00;01;22;14
Speaker 1
So, yeah, so that was, you know, not a lot of fun, that part of it. But, you know, I went to the county after 27 years at the Post Star, you know, as a writer and editor and, you know, I love that career. It was, you know, I had fun with that career, and it was a, that was a job where something was defeated, something different every day.

00;01;22;14 – 00;01;43;17
Speaker 1
You never knew what you were going to walk into every day. You know, but obviously, as, as we’ve seen to the, of the financial models of newspapers, aren’t, aren’t very solid these days. So, you know, it was a matter of either leave or, eventually see the demise of the product and the other, the post are still going, obviously.

00;01;43;17 – 00;01;49;28
Speaker 1
But, you know, it’s you’ve you’ve read it for a while. We’ve all looked at it. It’s not not nearly what it was unfortunately.

00;01;50;03 – 00;02;06;23
Speaker 2
So yeah, they definitely have made a lot of changes, that’s for sure. Like I, you know, I can’t speak to whether or not they’re, they’re good or bad, those changes. But, because I think that’s a pretty subjective thing, but, yeah, they’re definitely a different paper today than they were, say, 20 years ago.

00;02;06;25 – 00;02;19;12
Speaker 1
Yeah. And in fact, I was talking to one of my former colleagues few months ago. We were kind of counting up the newsroom positions, and I think they’ve cut probably about 80, 85% of their newsroom positions over the past 12 to 15 years. So.

00;02;19;12 – 00;02;20;10
Speaker 2
Oh, really? Yeah.

00;02;20;10 – 00;02;39;28
Speaker 1
And I think we all used to cover so covered a wide range of, of the whole region. And you know, just unfortunately that’s not not their business model at this point. So yeah. But yeah, it’s you know they the people were there try they do a good job what they do. It’s just they don’t have the staff to do what we used to do.

00;02;40;01 – 00;03;08;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know it’s interesting Don, because whether you know it or not, what we do with buying local was, it kind of in part inspired by, some of the things that you used to do, during your, your publishing career. Extinct. Yeah. Well, you know, because one of the it wasn’t the only thing that you did, obviously, over a 20 year span, but at one point in times you were kind of covering the small business beat around town.

00;03;08;02 – 00;03;29;22
Speaker 2
Is that fair to say? Yeah, yeah, and I remember God, this is got to be 15 years ago, let’s say roughly speaking. And I had bumped into you at Spot Coffee and I don’t know how we started talking about it, but all of a sudden you’re like, oh, and you end up doing like a little write up on my small little company.

00;03;29;24 – 00;04;05;12
Speaker 2
And I thought that was the coolest thing, man. I was like, I, you know, like as a small business owner, I’m nobody realistically, you know, in the grand scheme of things. And you were gracious enough to do this right up on our small business, and it impacted me and left a an impact with me. And so years later, as we started getting into, the publishing side and helping clients on the publishing side and then starting our own publication, and we know making some pivots over the first couple of years trying to decide what we wanted to do, it was really like one that was one of the things that came to my mind, where

00;04;05;12 – 00;04;21;09
Speaker 2
I was like, small business owners really don’t get an opportunity. Did have press done about them, you know, unless unless they start beating that drum themselves and really reaching out and taking a really active role in it. And so though.

00;04;21;11 – 00;04;21;28
Speaker 2
That, oh.

00;04;21;28 – 00;04;22;11
Speaker 1
That I lose.

00;04;22;11 – 00;04;27;10
Speaker 2
It. You know, we want to give unwavering support to small business going, oh.

00;04;27;12 – 00;04;59;24
Speaker 1
You know, that’s my life there I or it’s possible. Yeah. Yeah. Just froze up. But it could have been my wife and I’m actually at home. I was off today and a little fishing and, you know, in the chat with you now after have put out a few little work fires, but, but no, you know, that was one of the niches we had at the paper was, was, you know, we had our online blogs in the business section that, you know, told the story of of people like you who were starting out with this new businesses.

00;04;59;24 – 00;05;22;03
Speaker 1
And, and like you said, that was kind of really before social media had kind of gone crazy and taken off. And then people didn’t really have that outlet. And, you know, the newspaper and the website where were kind of main information sources and, you know, it was it was always good to see the impact. And, and still we were happy to try and help, help people on by doing our jobs.

00;05;22;05 – 00;05;38;14
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, it was a real, you know, driving force. That memory that I had, when we were repositioning our print product and who we wanted to support and how we wanted to do it. And it was I remember that, and I think I still have the clippings somewhere, actually, but, you know, cool stuff.

00;05;38;14 – 00;05;44;04
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just wanted to, you know, pay that. Oh, my eyes there real quick and.

00;05;44;06 – 00;06;08;05
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, it’s, I can’t say I remember that interaction because it had so many tens of thousands, I’m sure, over the years of, of all those years and, and, you know, I really enjoyed the, the blogging portion of our website and the, the, the business, the business section was something that really, you know, I, I miss kind of the most because that’s the kind of thing that I was of the daily paper.

00;06;08;05 – 00;06;37;01
Speaker 1
Anyway, that’s the niche that you’re selling is that’s, you know, how do people know that? You know, there’s a new coffee shop down the street, you know, that they’re you know, what’s being built over at the corner of Quaker and Glen streets? I mean, that this is, you know, how you used to get that information now it’s it’s, you know, the niche publications and social media and, it’s so fragmented that unless you’re, you know, you really have to pay attention to 20 different things to kind of get the whole perspective of the community sometimes.

00;06;37;03 – 00;06;38;16
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;06;38;18 – 00;06;56;01
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, it’s definitely a whole different world for sure. Yeah. So you started you kind of saw the writing on the wall. It sounds like this is what was going on in the print industry. And again, it’s it’s not you know, we’ve seen so many different changes in the publishing industry over the last 10 or 15 years.

00;06;56;01 – 00;07;21;13
Speaker 2
It’s pretty wild. So yeah, going out of business, you know what? Like the the whole printer side of things of who was actually doing the printing that, you know, there’s been some big shake ups in that world as well over the last couple of years, and that continues to change and evolve. So then but we got reunited, though, because all of a sudden I started receiving press releases, for Kelly’s Angels.

00;07;21;15 – 00;07;32;02
Speaker 2
And they were from you and I just a few weeks ago. I was like, are you the same Don Lehman? Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the work you’re doing with Kelly’s Angels.

00;07;32;05 – 00;07;47;08
Speaker 1
you know, I was a kid who I used to accompany my dad, who was a part time sports reporter to high school football games when I was like nine, ten years old. And I would go back and write my own stories at the Burg and record office while he wrote his stories.

00;07;47;08 – 00;07;58;03
Speaker 1
So I was always a journalism was what I wanted to do. And at the college and, you know, it’s kind of funny how it just kind of all spun into this and the whole different realm.

00;07;58;05 – 00;07;59;07
Speaker 2
Yeah. That’s awesome.

00;07;59;10 – 00;08;17;21
Speaker 1
when I was at the Post Star, the paper was partners with channel 13. We were news partners, and we kind of collaborated on a lot of different, news coverage, you know, issues and, and, you know, we we helped them out. They helped us out. And I became good friends with Mark Mulholland during that time period.

00;08;17;21 – 00;08;42;29
Speaker 1
And in fact, this goes all the way back to when his late wife, Kelly was still alive. And she was she was fighting breast cancer. And, you know, I got involved, you know, helping to add some fundraisers for her before she passed. So I, you know, I, I got involved to helping there and then, you know, Mark started this foundation and, you know, we’ve been I started by helping out at the races they did every year.

00;08;42;29 – 00;09;01;28
Speaker 1
And the charity has grown to the point where, you know, it’s it’s, you know, we’re having multiple events a year now and, doing so many good things, that I kind of just, you know, took on volunteering to do all the communications. Obviously, that’s what I do for a living. So it’s it’s ten in my wheelhouse.

00;09;01;28 – 00;09;22;20
Speaker 1
And I do a lot of social media for the different county agencies. So I do the Kelly’s Angels social media. And you know, it’s really we just finished up our our summer love and fun fest up in Lake George this past weekend. And, you know, it’s really kind of heartening to have a lot of the people who we’ve helped come to these events and to hear, hear how we’ve made an impact in their lives.

00;09;22;20 – 00;09;47;02
Speaker 1
And one of the things Kelly’s Angels does is a scholarship program for high school seniors who faced adversity. And I think we’re up to 14 different school districts where we give those out 101 to a male, one to a female student each year. And, you know, we had, the gentleman come up and explain how this, this scholarship, really helped his child decide that he wanted to go to college.

00;09;47;02 – 00;10;17;10
Speaker 1
And he’s he’s now a couple of years in the college where the dad didn’t think he would. He would have gone to college if he didn’t get that little financial help and that little, you know, impetus to kind of, take on this challenge. So and then obviously, there’s, you know, a lot of children we help with cards to, to, you know, if their the parent is sick or, child is sick, we, you know, give them some money to go to, you know, the water park or, you know, they have a trip they want to take or go to a Yankee game or things like that.

00;10;17;10 – 00;10;37;07
Speaker 1
So we give out a lot of grants along those lines, as well. So, Mark, Mark, Mahalo is a tireless guy. I don’t know how he has time to do everything he does. He’s just nonstop, energy and commitment to this, to this group. And, obviously he went through such a tough situation when his wife was sick.

00;10;37;07 – 00;10;54;12
Speaker 1
They have two children. You know, they just, you know, I don’t know how he had the strength to get through all that, but he did. And, you know, he’s doing a lot of good things now. You know, on the other side of that to to help a lot of families who were in that kind of a similar situation.

00;10;54;14 – 00;11;06;01
Speaker 2
That’s amazing. And an amazing that, you know, that you’re able to, you know, volunteer and and give back time in that way as well. That’s, you know.

00;11;06;01 – 00;11;24;20
Speaker 1
Yeah, it started with just to go into the five k race that we do every Mother’s Day. And then just kind of gradually next thing I know it’s, it’s I’m on the board and we’ve got a very dedicated group of board members from around the community and, you know, it’s it’s, yeah, it’s it’s it’s rewarding.

00;11;24;20 – 00;11;36;08
Speaker 1
I mean, you know, to see, like I said, like the the people come up to us to these events and tell us how how we helped, you know, that the makes the time that goes into it so, so worthwhile.

00;11;36;11 – 00;11;53;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. And I’m curious to you, you talked about your work with Warren County and you talked a little bit about the the Covid side of things. But now that we’re out of that kind of stuff and you’re not dealing with Covid protocols all day, every day. Yeah. Well, what is your work with the county look like?

00;11;53;06 – 00;12;29;01
Speaker 1
Well, I do, you know, the communications because, you know, we talked about how the media world is not what it was. I mean, in the, you know, community used to rely on the local newspapers and TV stations to cover government goings on, and that doesn’t happen really as much anymore. So I think, you know, it was back in 2019, some of the county leaders in Warren County had, you know, the there’s a, association, New York State Association of Counties that had talked to you at a conference about, hey, you guys, you know, the counties need to kind of take this on their own.

00;12;29;01 – 00;12;56;26
Speaker 1
Now, you can’t rely on your local media to cover everything you need, covered to help get the word out about, you know, different programs and meetings and, and, events and that sort of thing. So, so they created this position and, you know, basically I do press releases. I, you know, I do all the social media, I, you know, cover different events and get the word out about different things going on with the county.

00;12;56;29 – 00;13;16;07
Speaker 1
You know, there’s a lot Warren County. Obviously it’s not Saratoga County. It’s it’s not as big as Saratoga County, but. And especially in the summer, it’s a lot going on up here. I mean, you’ve got, you get a lot of people come up to vacation and, they say that the, the population here triples in the summer and, you know, so we, we try to, you know, I work with the tourism department.

00;13;16;10 – 00;13;24;15
Speaker 1
We try to just kind of, make sure people know what’s going on, and, you know, what their what their government is doing.

00;13;24;18 – 00;13;48;13
Speaker 2
I’m curious. And in those communication roles that you’re playing with Warren County and playing with, with Cal’s angels, what what are some of the obstacles that you face with trying get the word out? Because I know that, like, with social media, you know, you’re you’re subject to the algorithms, right? And with press releases, you’re you’re kind of at the mercy for whether or not people are going to pick them up and run them for you.

00;13;48;13 – 00;13;54;14
Speaker 2
And, what are some of those do you see those kinds of obstacles, I mean, or. Well, yeah, definitely.

00;13;54;19 – 00;14;19;13
Speaker 1
Yeah. Because there isn’t as much media as they used to be. So I send out a press release, you know, you know, there are some entities because they have cut staff that, that, are happy to get the free content essentially. And, and we welcome that. But sometimes I do have to kind of, you know, reach out to, you know, after I send something to say, hey, here’s why this is important.

00;14;19;15 – 00;14;23;07
Speaker 1
Can you help us out and get the word out about this? You know.

00;14;23;07 – 00;14;23;28
Speaker 2
It’s.

00;14;24;05 – 00;14;40;08
Speaker 1
And honestly, social media has become a big tool in that regard. I mean, we, we do we do use a little bit of paid social media every now and then, like, you know, we have, Warren counties, you know, currently recruiting new foster parents. So we’re trying to get the word out about the need for foster parents.

00;14;40;08 – 00;15;10;23
Speaker 1
And, you know, so, you know, the state provides some grant money. You can then, you know, advertise some of that, so things like that. Yeah. It’s really, you know, when I was a reporter, it kind of bugged me that I would, you know, you reach out, especially, you know, let’s just say some larger government agencies, that’s sort of one under the bus in New York state, but, you’d reach out to their press people and you’d, you know, you’d get a response a day or two later, they tell you they’re working on it.

00;15;10;23 – 00;15;39;03
Speaker 1
And they said, you know, I’m not going to be that person when it comes to responding. I technically say I’m off, but I get three different media inquiries came in today that I’ve been trying to juggle. After I went out and did a little hiking fishing this morning. And, you know, you just kind of have to, you know, make sure you’re available and that if you, you know, it’s a two way street, if it’s I go out of my way to, to help them and they’re gonna see a little easier, helping me.

00;15;39;05 – 00;15;40;01
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;15;40;03 – 00;15;46;20
Speaker 2
So when I hear you saying is that it comes back to relationships. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it all comes back to religion.

00;15;46;20 – 00;16;12;22
Speaker 1
No, it does because. And I know that, you know, I, I because I am responsive when the media reach out here, you know, I know they’ll, you know it. They understand that if, you know, welcoming a call to them and they’ll generally will be the same to me. So, you know, you don’t see a lot of, adversarial journalism around here at this point, which, you know, it has its place, obviously.

00;16;12;22 – 00;16;36;07
Speaker 1
I mean, there needs to be some investigative journalism, and there are some outlets to do that. But in general, you know, most of what you know, I’m trying to get out is about things going on at the county and, you know, like, we got an upcoming tax deadline, that sort of thing. You know, we had, de one the day of the year award for the state DA’s Association.

00;16;36;09 – 00;16;47;23
Speaker 1
There was kind of some recent things that, you know, job fairs, County does quite a few job fairs, so no things like that. That’s just the stuff we’re we’re trying to get out there so people know about it.

00;16;47;25 – 00;16;54;19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Is, is working in government a little different than working in the, in the private sector for, yeah.

00;16;54;19 – 00;17;12;27
Speaker 1
You know, I got especially when you had, you know, the newspaper website became a big thing and social media like Twitter and, you know, when I started out, you had the whole day to report your story, and then it became you got to do multiple updates on the website. You know, in the government realm, you know, the priority.

00;17;12;27 – 00;17;29;28
Speaker 1
You know, the biggest thing is make sure it’s accurate. It’s got to be, you know, that was the case at the star. But sometimes you’d you know, you do. You get out to a crash scene and just report observations, you know, as quick as you could. And it turns out, oh, gee, that something maybe wasn’t the way it appeared.

00;17;30;00 – 00;18;03;17
Speaker 1
But in government, you’ve got, you know, you got to make sure that what you’re telling the public is accurate. And, so sometimes, you know, it’s a, it’s it’s a, a slower pace to some degree. Because I’m not like, you know, I mean, I think back to one of the craziest days, I was a, the police and cop reporter was the day that years ago where you had a guy in southern Washington County shot and killed three of his family members, set his house on fire there, was driving back from that community, and the house blew up in the town of Salem.

00;18;03;17 – 00;18;35;07
Speaker 1
And five people died in that. So that was in one day. Eight different people in Washington County had passed away and different things. So yeah, that was that was, you know, I don’t have those sort of situations. We do. I also serve as, public information officer when there’s like, you know, disaster type things involve our officers, emergency services, you know, like, we had a bus crash, you know, a year and a half ago on the North Way, you know, they had, fire that a big tour boat over the winter.

00;18;35;07 – 00;18;50;06
Speaker 1
So, so I do, you know, kind of fill that role and when something bigger is happening, too. But, but, yeah, it’s so it has its days where, you know, everything’s different as well. Keeps the creative juices flowing.

00;18;50;08 – 00;19;02;01
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I bet, but sounds like it. And it sounds like what you’re saying too, is that it’s now working for the county. It’s more important to be accurate than it is to get the story out as quick as basically.

00;19;02;01 – 00;19;19;17
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, especially when we got into this, you know, Twitter had become such a big thing in news back then. And, you know, is that people expected all these updates on, on Twitter as soon as you’re running out to something and, you know, that wasn’t always good for journalism, unfortunately for actor, for your accuracy, you know?

00;19;19;23 – 00;19;23;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of retractions may. Yeah.

00;19;23;26 – 00;19;41;23
Speaker 1
Just like, you know, amending the story as it’s going along because the print product, you know, would be 6 to 8 hours later in a file story on the website. But, you know, you know, you hear on the scanner that something had happened and you run out to it. And it isn’t always what, what it seems to be.

00;19;41;23 – 00;19;48;20
Speaker 1
And, yeah. So it was. Yeah, it was a lot of, a lot of juggling, updating stories continuously there.

00;19;48;23 – 00;20;02;10
Speaker 2
I bet. I can’t imagine what a daily print product would look like. I mean, we print once a month, you know? Yeah. Like we’ve got weeks to get ready and even still, we’re we’re almost always up against a deadline. I couldn’t imagine trying to do it every day.

00;20;02;12 – 00;20;27;26
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Well, when you had, like I said, we had a staff at one point of 50 plus people in that newsroom. And so everyone had the role. Now, I think the poster prints three days a week. And, so yeah, they they had to cut that back and, and that’s but still I do know and working with those reporters at the day that they’re going to print is there’s always a pretty harried.

00;20;27;29 – 00;20;29;23
Speaker 2
Yes. Exciting exciting.

00;20;29;23 – 00;20;30;21
Speaker 1
Yeah. Oh yeah.

00;20;30;22 – 00;20;33;29
Speaker 2
Oh it’s not stressful. It’s exciting. Exactly.

00;20;33;29 – 00;20;43;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. It gets the adrenaline flow in its creative juices go in. I mean I you know. Yeah. That was that was fun. You become an adrenaline junkie to a degree.

00;20;43;13 – 00;20;57;09
Speaker 2
You, think, done. Oh. Excuse me, Don, if people want to learn more about the work that you’re doing at the county, or they want to learn more about Kelly’s angels, how do they find you guys?

00;20;57;12 – 00;21;21;06
Speaker 1
On the county level, we have a county website. It’s w w w that Warren County, ny.gov. And right on the front page is kind of a big news section that we update regularly with things going on at the county. Obviously we’ve got social media presence on all the different social media platforms. You know, Facebook, x Instagram, LinkedIn, and Kelly’s Angels.

00;21;21;06 – 00;21;40;25
Speaker 1
Same thing with Kelly’s Angels on Facebook. Instagram are our big presence. Then we’ve got our website. We just finished up our big summer event in Lake George. So our next event, as far as I know, at this point, some things kind of pop up, maybe a golf tourney in the fall or something, but, next event will be.

00;21;40;25 – 00;22;03;14
Speaker 1
And Mother’s Day next Mother’s Day, our annual five K run walk at, Spa State Park. So, see, you know, Kelly’s Angels website, Kelly’s Angels inc.org explains a lot of what, what the organization does and how it was founded. And, all the good things that that, Mark, Michael and kind of Stuart’s awesome.

00;22;03;20 – 00;22;09;19
Speaker 2
Love it. Don, thanks so much for coming on. And and time. That would be me. I really appreciate it.

00;22;09;22 – 00;22;25;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I appreciate your appreciate your product. I look forward to it whenever it comes out. And so I always I know Matt Greenblatt fairly well. So I always read the articles in the stuff that they are, they are promoting. So yeah, it’s a good deal. Yeah. Good content.

00;22;25;14 – 00;22;30;12
Speaker 2
Awesome. Well thank you. We appreciate it. We’re we’re tracks by now. All right. Trying to fight the good fight.