Freedom's Dick Wallace retiring

This may seem a bit like inside baseball, but Dick Wallace, part of the family that owns the Register and Freedom Communications, its parent company, us such a good guy that he's worthy of a bit of celebration. He'll turn 70 in January and he's announced his retirement. It may be, however, that he is taking one for the team, freeing up his salary for other expenses. He'll continue to be involved in Freedom School with Tibor Machan, and is likely to be around the corporate office quite a bit as well. What has endeared him to me, however, is his consistent, persistent and sincere support of freedom principles and his influence in making sure the family continues to make supporting liberty a big part of the corporate mission. That and the fact that along with being a hard-headed manager he has a great sense of humor and a great sense of fun.

As is hardly a secret, the newspaper business is still in serious trouble. Terry Horne, the new publisher at the Register, has pretty solid plans for dealing with the situation, but a whole lot -- death of department stores, Craigslist and Monster.com taking away classified advertising, other Internet news sites, young people not buying newspapers -- is beyond our control. We're working on Web-first reporting and commentary. The strategy of zoned editions, to attract local businesses not interested in the full run of the paper, is starting to show results, but we're a long way from being out of the woods.

More thoughts on Bill Buckley

Here's a link to the Register's editorial today on the death of Bill Buckley, and to a blog post that has some links to other comments. Dave Boaz at Cato did a quick piece that the Register will run on Sunday (at least it's on a page proof as of today, though sometimes things change) suggesting that the conservative movement Buckley was so influential in building died with him, taken over by Christian rightists and neocons, who are in a self-destructive mode themselves. While I'm at it, here's a roundup of comments from others, and a link to Tibor Machan's piece. Tibor came into the office yesterday and recorded a Webitorial as well. Maybe we overdid it a bit, but he was a writer who really had an impact on America.

Link to Horserace'08

Here's the link I neglected to put into my previous post to the Register's Horserace '08 blog, where I'll be posting observations on New Hampshire in general and the Saturday night debate. The blog also features writers from around the Freedom chain, as well as Tibor Machan. We're also excited the Lew Rockwell has agreed to write an occasional post for us. He (and his contributors) are about as closely attuned to the Ron Paul campaign and background to the movement as almost anyone.