Flashy Valley Newcomer Challenges Historic Weekly

When Charlotte Paul and Ed Groshell bought the Snoqualmie Valley Record in 1949, the city of Snoqualmie had 750 souls, ``not counting the dogs that caught up on their sleep in the middle of the street.'' But the Groshells didn't find the place all that restful.

Charlotte's 1955 book about the Record, ``Minding Our Own Business,'' circulated through newsrooms all over the country, exploding the bucolic myth surrounding small-town newspaper ownership. Far from Nirvana, the Groshells - who sold the paper in 1961 - found themselves on a continual round of seven-day weeks featuring equipment breakdowns and budget-breaking replacements, vanishing employees and battles with rain and snow, earthquakes and floods.

Now, with the fingers of population growth reaching into the rural valley, the 77-year-old Snoqualmie Valley Record is facing a new challenge: competition from a rival weekly - owned by a newspaper chain.

The Snoqualmie Valley was home to 19,850 people in 1990, up 37 percent from 1980 by census calculations. Bellevue demographer Jim Hebert anticipates another 29 percent gain in the current decade, for a total of 34,850 by 2000.

That proved to be a tempting market for the Persis Corp. of Honolulu, owner of the Eastside daily Journal American based in Bellevue. Through its local division, Northwest Media Inc., Persis last December started a rival weekly, the Snoqualmie Valley Reporter, in the Record's territory, loosely defined as the river-valley towns of Snoqualmie, North Bend, Preston, Fall City, Carnation and Duvall and their surroundings.

The Reporter is a visually modern paper: bright and colorful, with snappy headlines, smart writing and excellent photo reproduction. In addition to a publisher, it has a news staff of four writers, a photographer and an artist, while sharing facilities, photos and ads with Northwest Media's other papers (the Mercer Island Reporter and Bothell Northshore Citizen, in addition to the Journal American).

Meanwhile, at the little white building on the corner of Falls Avenue and River Street, the Snoqualmie Valley Record hasn't changed a lot since the Groshells' days, although the hum of computers has replaced the clatter and bang of linotype and letterpress, and some of the leaks in the roof have been plugged.

The Record's random layout is decades behind the times, ignoring the attention-grabbing techniques of modern design and typography. It's the only newspaper in this area that still uses rural correspondents, enabling the reader to learn not only about the week's civic action but also who visited whom and what was served at the church potluck.

The photos are mostly what the trade calls ``Latin-American revolutionary: You line 'em up and shoot.''

``We run this place like weeklies used to be run,'' says Sandie Scott, wife of co-publisher Bob Scott. ``Somebody calls and says his kid just caught a big fish, and we tell him to bring them down here and the publisher will take a picture.'' If the fish is big enough, it might make the front page.

Bob Scott feels they're giving the readers what they want. He displays the ear of a 1924 copy: ``The Valley Record has no politics; no prejudices. It is fair and impartial to all,'' and says the policy hasn't changed. The paper prints local columnists and readers' letters but seldom a staff-written editorial. ``We give people the facts, and let them make up their own minds,'' Scott says.

Readers are divided in their feelings about the contrasting newspapers.

``I like the format of the new Reporter, but I like getting more personal, local information from the old Record,'' says North Bend resident Charles Gliva.

Less ambivalent is was Audrey Schroeder of Fall City - one of a number of Record readers who recently wrote of their dismay upon observing three groceries, QFC, Thriftway and Red Apple, switch their advertising from the Record to the new Reporter. Thus far, Stevens' Family Grocer of Fall City has stayed with the Record, while advertising in the Reporter as well.

Cleo Soister of Fall City, widow of late co-publisher Bob Soister, points out that the Record ``is owned here. . . . The Snoqualmie Valley Reporter will never be any real part of the valley. It must answer to a large corporation whose goal is profit.''

And JoAnn Klacsan of North Bend heads a campaign to persuade grocers to return to the Record. She sent out about 250 postcards to friends and neighbors asking them to take measures in support of the Record.

But the upstart is not without its local partisans. Several issues of the Reporter, for example, have contained a house ad featuring North Bend Mayor Fritz Ribary reading the new paper and saying, ``I enjoy reading the Snoqualmie Valley Reporter. It is well written, interesting and on target.'' (Ribary could not be reached by telephone, and North Bend's City Council members declined comment on either newspaper.)

And Beth Tarr, a retired teacher who won a $1,000 shopping spree when she subscribed to the Reporter, was quoted in the paper as saying, ``I didn't subscribe to the newspaper to win money. I subscribed because it's a good newspaper.'' (Tarr subsequently donated the money to the Valley Mission of St. Thomas.)

Distress at the new competition is more evident among the Record's loyal readers than within the Record office, where the owners - while acknowledging the loss of advertisers hurts - are confident their paper will survive. The Scotts and Katie Buchman, whose husband, Gaillard, died last month after 25 years as a Record co-publisher, insist they have no intention of selling out. ``We'll just have to find other advertising to replace what we've lost,'' Bob Scott says.

Susan Bond, publisher of the Reporter, declined to be interviewed, referring all questions to Robert Weil, president of Northwest Media Inc.

Weil said the company is sending 10,000 copies of the Reporter by direct mail throughout the valley and circulating it on newsstands. An aggressive campaign to win paid subscriptions, offering a trip for two to Mazatlan as first prize, has netted 3,098 subscribers, he said.

That campaign was a bit too aggressive for Pat Brewington, who lives east of North Bend. ``A man called and said I'd been receiving the Reporter free for three months, and I should now buy a subscription,'' she says. ``I told him I wasn't interested, that I already have a newspaper, the Snoqualmie Valley Record. He said, `You call that a newspaper?'

``He said everybody else he talked with was so supportive; that `90 percent just love the Reporter and think it's great,' and that `this valley is going to grow tremendously and need a newspaper like the Reporter.' I hung up.''

``It's not our policy to make derogatory remarks about the competition,'' Weil says. ``I think there's room in the marketplace for both of us.''

And he denies the Reporter is ``pro-growth.''

``We're more pro-community than pro-development,'' he says. ``Our editorial policy reflects what's best for the local people, not what's best for any segment. We have gone to great lengths to have a cross-section of opinion from the local valley people (in the Reporter columns).

``When you look at the paper, it's obvious a number of people like what we're producing, and depend on our product to know what's going on in their community.''

It's also obvious the once-rural, now fast-developing valley contains a wide spectrum of opinion about newspapers.

When the Groshells arrived in 1949, the first advice offered them was ``don't change a thing. The people around here don't like change.'' In some quarters, that appears true even today.

But with Eastside growth spilling into the Snoqualmie Valley's cow pastures, change could be writing a final chapter in Charlotte Paul Groshell's saga of independent small-town newspapering.