M.E. Sprengelmeyer may be the hardest-working newspaper man on the planet, a man described in a recent New York Times profile as working “to the brink of exhaustion, fueling late-night production sessions with nicotine and caffeinated energy drinks.”
Sprengelmeyer owns the weekly Guadalupe County Communicator, based in Santa Rosa. Besides handling the business decisions, he works as a reporter and page designer, and even picks the papers up from the printers in Clovis — about a three-hour round trip.
Sprengelmeyer grew up in Albuquerque, and worked various newspaper jobs in Albuquerque before settling at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where he covered national politics from Washington, D.C. When the paper shut down, Sprengelmeyer went on the hunt for a small-town paper to buy, and discovered one two hours from his hometown.
On Monday, Sprengelmeyer celebrated his six month anniversary as the paper’s owner.
Mark Holm, a Communicator contributor, said Sprengelmeyer’s newspaper has revitalized Santa Rosa and serves as an example of the enduring need for newspapers, especially in small towns.
“Generally speaking, when I go out there, which is about once a week on average, it almost always happens that people will approach us. … They come out of their way to tell him how much they appreciate what he’s done for the paper, for the community,” Holm said. “So often in newspaper work, you file your reports every day, and you don’t have a real clear sense of who’s reading it, or how widely it’s read, and out there you get a real clear picture of that.”
Now, without further delay, the Daily Lobo is proud to present M.E. Sprengelmeyer, in his own words: – Until I came here, I would just focus on one story a day, two
stories a day, maybe. But now it’s kind of neat because I have to think of the whole paper as a book — as a little book we put out every week. – I think that this is where the rubber meets the road on the First Amendment. This is where, if you didn’t have a vigorous local press, something would be really lost. – It’s no different here than at the beat in Washington, D.C. A lot of things are just the same, but it’s on a different scale.
- Even in a case where a lot of the town has heard part of the story, a good newspaper tries to add context to all those whispers that are out there and put them in the proper context.
- Imagine a town the size of Santa Rosa or imagine a town the size of Albuquerque or a town the size of Washington, D.C. without a newspaper. Just imagine if it was just a bunch of scattered bloggers everywhere, but no institution that’s there firmly planted on the ground that can be held accountable for what it writes. – There’s accountability that a newspaper has. And every town needs one. And pretty soon, not every town’s going to have one.
- They said in the (New York Times) article that I was an “evangelist for small-town newspapers.” Heck yeah I am.
- (It’s short for) Michael Edwin. It got shortened at the Albuquerque Journal, more than 20 years ago, because the byline was too long to fit in one column, so they shortened it. Without consulting me, they just came up with M.E. and put it in the paper.
- A Web site might have a million readers, but 10 of ‘em are in Albuquerque, and 10 of ‘em are in Stockholm, and 50 of ‘em are in New York. One next-door neighbor is not reading that same blog.
-I don’t mean to dismiss the Internet. I think the Internet’s amazing, and I think the blogs out there are amazing. They’re doing some amazing storytelling. But what they lack is the ability to bind together a physical community of people, and that’s what I worry would be lost if newspapers all died. And I don’t think we’re all going to.
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- They didn’t find a buyer (for the Rocky Mountain News). They closed it three weeks before its 150th anniversary. It was, at the time, the longest continuously operated business in the state of Colorado. That includes grocery stores, haberdasheries and all kinds of businesses.
- A newspaper roots you in your community. That’s my theory of it, and that’s why I love newspapers. They’re all about community.
