The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead cuts 21 jobs

Hey I watched Wayzata and Buffalo last night on one of my Fox cable packages.
I didn't know who was who for 20 minutes.

 

Kerry Collins covers the Minnesota prep scene for The Forum.

 

Fargo is a very livable city. NDSU is a major sports entity and perhaps the model of a program successfully transitioning from DFivision II; the high schools are solid athletically, both at the Class A and Class B level (Oak Grove); Moorhead State and Concordia provide good small-college competiton, there's independent baseball in the American Association and a good Legion program, I suspect there's at least af2 and minor-league hockey, and great college hockey at UND just up I-29. ...

Real estate is affordable, ND state taxes are low and you're 25 minutes from the Minnesota lake country. And, has been said, the paper is solid, and the sports section was historically excellent under Ed Kolpack and Dennis Doeden.

Yes, it gets cold. But not appreciably colder than the Minneapolis-St. Paul, which is considered an excellent place to live. I'm not interested in livin gin the midwest again. But as has been said, you could do far worse than Fargo, and way, way worse than the Forum.

And the loyal and true Minot High Magicians rule.

 

Wayzata was in blue and gold, silly!

 

Does he do it just well enough for the Forum not to lose?

 

I would say the biggest problem with covering preps in Fargo would be that so much of the state is so far away. But they seem to keep the schedules pretty segregated between East and West, which would help.

 

It's a lot colder than the Twin Cities. I don't think it approached 40 below this winter in Minneapolis. There isn't an af2 team, but there is a junior hockey that started up in the USHL at a new arena on the west side of town.

One thing that's weird in the way of taxes is that property taxes are higher in North Dakota than in Minnesota, but Minnesota has higher income taxes. Plus, local government and schools are hosed in Minnesota because of a $6-7 billion budget deficit.

The IIHF U18 championships are in Fargo-Moorhead in the spring and the American Legion World Series is in Fargo this summer as well.

Covering preps in Fargo is easier than it could be because Forum Communications owns the papers in Grand Forks, Jamestown and Dickinson. Plus Bemidji and several weeklies and twice-weeklies on the Minnesota side.

 

One cool thing about ND would be that they have, what, 16-18 teams in the top level? That's practically a state championship per school per year across all sports.

 

Back in the day there were eight teams in the Western Dakota Association, eight teams in the Eastern Dakota Conference and six or seven in the North Star, but many of those schools have dropped to Class B so there might be 16 Class A teams.

The football regular season ended on a Thursday, the round of 8 was on Tuesday, the semifinals on Saturday and the championship the following Saturday. All taken care of in about 11 days. And Fargo Shanley always won so the playoffs were generally a moot point anyways.

Class A basketball has two regionals, and a state tournament. But the Class B tournament was the state's premier athletic event.

Not nostalgic for North Nowhere in any way, shape or fashion. But Fargo is a nice city and from April through late October the weather is generally outstanding, with lots and lots of sunshine.

 

Fargo is nice. I enjoyed my weekend there this fall.

 

applied for the se gig they put up maybe a year or so ago. seemed like a solid paper in a great city. family owned place, so figured it would have a bit more stability and security. guess they won't be taking the company jet to road games for a while ...

 

They still might, since they need to take the WDAY crew too. Layoffs haven't hit the weeklies as bad.