By Bob Simmons, CEO, Simmons Multimedia Last week, I wrote about national news reporting and the lack of credibility, trust and contempt many of us hold for the 5th Estate. Perhaps we can then agree national news coverage in 2024 is a mess. The question then becomes who can you trust to tell you the truth when it comes to North Dakota or what we might call local news? In most cases, I would say the local TV/ radio station or paper. The exception to this rule would be a media entity which is located in a large enough market that they can make enough money doing business with just a certain segment of advertisers who happen to share similar ideology. The other possibility is the ownership of the media in question is extremely wealthy and can toss money into their operation to espouse their own views.

In the name of research, we headed south to Bear Creek Winery the other side of Fargo last Saturday. This amazing place was founded in 2003, one of the original wineries in the Red River Valley.

Millennials… Yes, we do more than just eat avocado toast and gripe about climate change, I swear. Millennials are those who were born between 1981-1996.

On my morning walk a few days ago, my walking buddy was talking about her oldest son, kid number one, heading off to college this coming weekend and was describing how each family member was dealing with the upcoming transition. Kid number two, the middle son, was more concerned about his upcoming football game and was acting completely indifferent. Dad was starting to feel a bit emotional, anticipating the void in the family and trying to fill it with a slew of new memories in the week leading up to the departure. The youngest child, a daughter, was busy measuring the closet in her older brother’s basement bedroom and had already ordered several new room decorations in anticipation of moving into his soon to be vacated domain. This made me snort-laugh for almost a full block.

Have you noticed in every form of media, every news item nowadays - no matter how inane - is set up as being ‘breaking news’? As I sit penning this week’s column it’s just before 2PM on Wednesday, Aug. 14. Yes, I know you’re reading this in the Aug. 23 paper; I like to work ahead by at least one to two weeks, so should something come up - I won’t have to rush to get my column turned in. I’m lazy this way. It just came across my news feed that our new worry for the day (or should I say hour) is the World Health Organization has declared a global emergency over Mpox, formerly MonkeyPox. I suppose the PC police had a fit about that name, but I’ll leave that for others to speculate. The thing is, if every news story is ‘breaking news’ how will we ever react when something really big and important occurs? Wait a second... forget Mpox...new breaking news: Harris leads Trump or tied in swing states. You see what I mean, it’s continuous... Breaking news (again) Wally Amos dies at 88. Wally is the guy who created Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies. Now to me, that’s a real honest to goodness ‘breaking news’ item. I love me some Famous Amos!

This week I want to tell you a little bit about the newspaper. Back in the mid 1990s, our radio company at the request of our advertisers published a quarterly shopper for a few years that was bulk mailed to residents of Cavalier and Pembina counties. If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the Rendezvous Trader. This was our first foray into the print medium.

It’s been a long week, and that’s about all I have to say, but I know I need to throw at least a few more words in or I might get in trouble. In reality, I shouldn’t be complaining.

While many others have been living the lake life all summer, we finally made it last weekend for the first time. This is partly because we don’t own a lake place and partly because we don’t want to own a lake place. The lake is great, and we always enjoy our time there, but since neither Greg nor I grew up boating, swimming, skiing, tubing, fishing and doing all the fun things lake life entails, we never considered getting our own place. We have had opportunities in the past to buy a place and have given the idea careful consideration, but in the end, we landed on buying a camper as a compromise. Camper life lasted a whole five years with most of our camping time spent at the farm with the camper parked beside our cold storage shop. We’ve decided we’re good lake guests for now, and that’s about as good as it gets. We show up, we help, we cook, we clean, we bring food and beverages, and we sleep wherever our host puts us. When it’s time to go, we pack up, clean up and drive away, giving it no further thought until the next time we’re invited to partake in a lake weekend.

Do you ever need a couple of days off from having a couple days off? Of course you have; it’s a real thing. That was me on Monday, along with several other members of my family, including six grandchildren.

Hamburgers, hot dogs, salads and sweets! The most popular summer lunch in this laid back state, as well as much of the Midwest. Last week we enjoyed United Communications annual meeting and election, including a fine North Dakota lunch.