THE RECENT DEMISE OF PRESS CLUBS IN THE USA

One of my favorite jobs in the past was working at the Minnesota Press Club in Minneapolis.  I enjoyed the insider role of being around press conferences and the immediacy of events taking place that in some cases we were asked to facilitate, if only to find a room for a meeting.  One such event at the time was the status of the Minnesota North Stars hockey team which was failing to attract enough customers at the Met Center in Bloomington (where the megamall is now located).  A  last ditch campaign was started by the ownership to salvage the team, but the next year it moved to Dallas.  The buzz of these sort of events would be in the news, but being part of a Press Club gave you a sense of being involved directly in some small but tangible way.  In this case, 3 or 4 of the star players came to speak at the Club to the membership, but very few persons attended as sports do not seem to generate as much excitement as they once did, with players expected to be role models and economy generators for the city, despite doing an activity that has no apparent higher value than mere entertainment. Many other events occurred, but that is one I recall offhand.

I started out at the Club full time to help the executive director who was asked to return from a leave to get the books back into arrears.  Another person had got things a bit screwed up and the billings were behind and chaotic.  After things got straightened out my job would then become a strictly part-time position. 

Marty, my boss, had been there during the heyday years of the club, when Hubert Humphrey was a popular politician and the Press Club had its offices in the Radisson Hotel with its own bar and a regular bartender by the name of Joe.   Now it was located on the 45th floor on the IDS building with office space in the center section of the building with no windows to look out of.  I'd go in once a week and tackle the stack of mail on my desk and try to get it all handled in a couple hours.  We also had Newsmaker luncheons up on the 50th, the top floor and observation point to look down on the city and its lakes, where I ran the sound equipment, but those dwindled from three a week to about one, and so my shortened hours usually were scheduled immediately before a luncheon, so as I would be around to do the other activity.  To say that this arrangement was highly unpleasant, would be a gross understatement!

The Club was definitely on the skids, as Press Clubs all across the nation were folding up at this time, in favor of health clubs, following the fads of encouraging employees to seek healthier living to cut down on missed days of work and disability.   The Club also seemed to be heading in this direction because of dwindling membership, with the majority of the ones who remained being mostly in the retired bracket who had their yearly fees reduced from one hundred and fifty dollars to twenty-five.  There was no way to continue with those kind of lost finances. The membership steadily declined, from 700 when I started to under 300 at the end.  But I guess I always had the hopes that this might turn into a regular job, despite the dire appearances of stagnation, if and when the membership could be revived to higher numbers by a brilliant plan of attracting new members by lowing their dues for the initial first year to a substantially lower amount.   I seem to recall that refund options were also given in case of the eventual folding of the club, and so it was a great opportunity for a new breed of club members to step in and take over, so to speak, without much risk.  The problem was that when I answered phone calls from individuals interested in pursuing membership,  I was instructed to tell them that there were no club benefits being offered.  It was more of a place to meet others, and you only got out whatever you put into it.  But this was hard to describe to prospective joiners who had no club experience.  It would have been nice to say to them, You get all these membership perks and  thingies that you can use to make yourself more accessible to the club's resources, but that's not the way it was.  Not then, and not ever as far as I was aware.  The club sold off whatever things of value it had, such as signed copies of books and book shelves, and tried to get by on a streamlined version of the club in a new location at the cheaper rent Holiday Inn before closing its doors for the last time. 

The Press Club was only open to journalists and public relations persons within local companies.  You had to be recommended or sponsored by a current club member, and the board voted on whether or not you would be accepted into the club.  I think they waived some of these stipulations near the end, but by and large you had to be making your living doing some form of professional business in the field of journalism.

Our newsmakers were often just p. r. professionals who could talk to employees of firms in regard to improving their services, but occasionally we'd get a Cloris Leachman, or Charles Osgood, Heraldo Rivera or John Chancellor.  For these type of recognizable speakers, they'd bring in another person to do the sound and record the goings on to sell on cassette tapes.  This stung a bit, but it was done as a favor to one of the emcees of the club who had her son come in and do it, and so I had to bite my tongue and let it go as if it didn't bother me.  The funny thing is that they never paid the guy anything, as I'm sure they didn't pay anything to any of the three emcees either who shared club events between themselves.  Surely they were getting some exposure from their involvement and other indirect benefits, but I don't recall them ever being offered a penny for their services by the club.  Everything was done gratis. The club couldn't have afforded to pay them, even if anyone had asked for something.  This was another sign that the club was on near collision course with dissolvement, but I never took it too seriously because I had another job simultaneously working with the handicapped in their homes as a live-in, and I pretty much let everything slide off my back when it came to how I was treated by the club.  I guess I was thankful for the hours I had received in the past, and was willing to stick it out for a short time to see if they were going to ask me to stay on or not.   I hung in there, when most other people would have said farewell.  My wages largely came from doing mailings for two other organizatons, Women In Communications (WICI) and Relgious Communicators of America (RCOA), and thus my desk was always stacked high with membership requests for membership materials to be processed and mailed out.  I got a lot of first hand typing experience, addressing envelopes and typing in forms.

One of the speakers that I was allowed to record and attend at one of the luncheons was Paul Wellstone.  At this time he was just beginning his run for state senator, and not too many had even heard of him.   He came to his speaking engagement with a large stack of computer printouts of the incubent senator's lobbyist friends, and said that he had stayed up all night gathering and printing this material out.   Paul was the kind of guy who inspired you to want to get involved in his election efforts, and get things done.  But after listening to him and being encouraged by all the things he had to say about politics, which for him was truly grass roots, with his background being one of  a school professor and not a full time politician, it made sense to me, but at the same time, I found myself thinking, Hey, I've never been political in my life.  Why am I starting to feel like I could be more active in it at this point?   That is the effect listening to Paul had on everyone in Minnesota, and he was soon to be our next senator, a good one I might add.  It was like meeting Abraham Lincoln face to face, and knowing that this guy was going to make a big difference in Washington, D.C., once he got there, because he was different and like no one else that was running for office.

Not all of my experiences at the Press Club were of that caliber.  More often than not I was sent on errands, to deliver things to the WCCO building, where Don Shelby, our chairman of the board, worked as a news anchor.   He would call me at the Press Club when I filled in for Marty when she went on vacation.   He would ask me if anyone was coming in that day to have lunch with him and talk about the club with him.  The answer was always the same, noone had called or stopped in to make an appointment. Don was extremely busy, putting in excessively long hours covering Desert Storm at that time, and I think he was thankful that noone was interested in having lunch.  Don is one of those persons who has had a great impact on the Twin Cities.  Despite his failure to revive the club, he has been a continuing force on high standards in journalism in the local media, and there just simply isn't a nicer guy around.  It was wonderful to have a brief season of getting to know him, and finding out that he is exactly as he appears on radio and TV.  So many celebrities often are not, and it is a refreshing surprise when you encounter someone who is. 

Dave Moore was Don's predeccessor in the nice guy role at the club, and Dave was like a father to Don in grooming him to takeover his news direction at WCCO.   Don was from the south, Texas, and he could have easily been ignored by the Midwestern set, but Dave believed in the youngster, and was right there with him on the set, overseeing his development.  It was a wonderful partnership that benefited both parties, as Dave got more opportunities to be independent and do outside projects that still command interest from viewers today, when they reair some of his narrated pieces  like Father of the Lions (about George Adamson), Lost Twin Cities, and other memorable projects such as play-acting and writing poetry.  The first thing that struck me immediately about Dave upon meeting him at the club is that he had the gout or something that was causing him to jump about constantly.  I was trying to figure out how he was able to go on the news nightly and not have anyone aware of this condition.  Of course, his lower body was obstructed by a table, so I imagine something more was going on beneath the scenes than were being offered to the public on the television screens.  Dave eventually was asked to step down by retiring as the anchor, although he did not cherish the idea, but he soon came back on his own weekly Sunday morning program that was wonderful, despite his voice becoming less limber than in his long career as anchor and Bed Time News character that won many a late night audience viewer over to his side for life.  Despite whatever hardships he was personally enduring, the Sunday show went on and enjoyed productive happenings throughout to the end.  Dave sort of faded out of the public eye after that, and suddenly years later news came that he had passed away, totally out of the limelight, the way he wished it to be.  A local legend had went home.  What job he found to do in heaven I'm not sure, because he was so gifted at a number of things.   I'm sure Dave would have aspired to be a national news figure, like Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather, but he was such a valuable fixture here in the Twin Cities that it would be hard for him to have left it behind for pie in the sky in a different market.  But around here, he was definitely of major league status, just like the Twins and the Vikings, major league sports teams who arrived during his stay, deservedly earning the most watched news program mentions in the area for years.   His only authored book of prose was titled, Friend of the Family, which was more filled with the letters of viewers rather than his own writings, but because of lackluster sales, he decided to make that his only book.  He did, however, do some writing for the book review columns of the Sunday newspaper, and it was always a treat to read his insights and comments on the arts.

One time at the club, I joined Marty at a table near the entrance to an event and we were checking the count total and kept coming up one short.  Someone had gone in without a reservation or ticket.  I had to go in front of the group and ask which individual was the guilty party.  It was Dave Moore who reminded me that his wife was the one whom he had paid for upon entrance, but that I had forgotten to write it down for the total.  On the one hand, it felt bad that I had forgotten, but on the other side, it felt good because Dave remembered to be gentle in telling me that I was the one who had screwed up.  Nothing was drastically affected by my error, the world would go on turning.  The stories that had circulated about Dave and his club cronies being alcoholics at one time recycled through my memory at such times, with the reminder that, Yes, nothing was destroyed, despite some mistakes by club members they had done a great job of handing the torch to the next generation.  Guys like Don, who would not make the same mistakes in giving their best to the pursuit of excellence in journalism, would see to that.  Don has the awards to prove that he has done so!

The Minnesota Press Club was formerly the Minneapolis Press Club, and perhaps someday it will reappear in some other manifestation.  I won't be a part of it, but it was fun to be among the cities' finest minds for a brief moment and embibe their company.  I got the computer system and the desk that it was resting on, at a discount price, but I'll forever keep something that is much more important: an insight into how an organization is run and how people make a big difference in whether a club will be a success or a failure.  I'm happy to say that the Press Club was a home to me for a season, and I'll bring that experience into every future endeavor that I undertake.  Although the demise of the club was a shock to me (As I found myself wondering, now how are all these people going to get together with one another now that the club is no longer an entity?), I realized that the club had indeed been a vibrant part of the community but that it's time had past.  The Downtown area of any urban area is more than just buildings and parking ramps.  It is a conglomerate of individual businesses who are vying for the support of the joint efforts of those who will bring the work to completion.  When a club or organization cannot help reach those goals, it cannot continue as a go-between and needs to close its doors.  The club faltered by providing credit to some who did not pay for inviting clients to enjoy the club's dining and wining at their own expense and decided to declare bankruptcy.  It could have been avoided, but you can't reverse what has already been committed.  When top ranking officials pledged monies to the club for scholarships and awards to students and writing seminars, and then renigged, it was another sign that things were changing, that the old system could not work any more.  People like Paul Wellstone were the new order.   Changes had to be made.  Debts did not pile up over night.  It slowly creeps up on you, until you realize that the end has come.  And in the end, you have to face yourself in the mirror and recognize that you've gotten old and that your successors who are younger will do things differently, in some ways better and in some ways not quite as good.  But it will be their changes to make, along with their own mistakes to make as well.  So it was with the Press Club, as I saw it.