November 8, 1998

Wednesday was the day the yellow smiley face from that big chain of stores from Arkansas frowned at me. And, if that yellow smiley face which bounces around lowering prices spokeYiddish, it could have smirked and said, "chutzpah" the next day.

The chain from Arkansas, you know, The Chain, was opening its first store in the area. It isn't just a store, it's one of their supercenter stores, complete with a grocery section. Some people are ecstatic to finally have their very own smiley face store to shop at in town. Other people wonder what impact it will have on local, family-owned businesses. So, either way, it was an important business story for us to cover. The "grand opening" was set for 8 a.m.; The store opening for 9 a.m. I ambled over at 8:50 a.m., Knowing that Iwas interested in pictures of people shopping, rather than the opening ceremony. Shopping, after all, is what the place is about.

This is the exterior scene setter we ran of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter. Photo by Mark Hertzberg © 1998 Racine Journal Times

This is the photo we ran of shoppers in the new Wal-Mart SuperCenter shortly after the store opened Wednesday October 28, 1998. I would have liked to have time to shoot more, but I was stopped by store security. Photo by Mark Hertzberg ©1998 Racine Journal Times

I checked in at the customer service counter and asked for a manager. I explained what I wanted to the gentleman who came up to me, and he smiled and told me to go ahead and take pictures. A few minutes later I sensed two people literally closing in on me. I was kneeling for a low angle shot, and so they were a bit more intimidating, given that one of them seemed well over six feet tall. They wanted to know what I was doing. I told them. The tall man said, "it's against store policy to take pictures unless it has been arranged in advance." I reiterated that I had checked in with a manager. "It's against store policy..." And the tall man proffered his business card which identified him as working in property loss prevention or something like that, which evidently simply means security which evidently also means management of news about the store.

We went back and forth. Once more I said that I’d checked in with management, and simply wanted some pictures of customers. "You obviously talked to someone who has only worked here for two weeks, and doesn't know company policy," the tall man said. I couldn't win.

And that is how I came to probably be the first person to be shown the door at Racine's new smiley face, falling prices, supercenter.

The tale doesn't end with my being shown the door. Bear in mind that there are two ways for a store to get its message to newspaper readers. One is through advertising, which costs money. The second, of course, is through the news pages which can be wonderful, free (how much cheaper can that be?) publicity.

I called the store manager a couple of hours later and told him what had happened. He listened, and then simply told me that I could not take pictures without an escort. That's understandable, I said, as long as the escort does not direct my photography. We agreed that wouldn't happen. I can be back out in a half hour, I said. "we can't accommodate you today," he said. "You can come Thursday or Friday." But the store opening is Wednesday's news story, I explained, not Thursday or Friday’s. It didn't matter. We ran a photo I’d taken of shopper before I was given the boot, and an exterior. The one I shot of a handful of labor pickets expressing their concerns about the store did not run. The page editor explained that he thought, given his space, that the innocuous exterior photo was a quicker read for a scene-setter to put the shopping photo in context. He said the labor concerns were addressed in the story. The finale to this tale came thursday when Liana Cooper told me she'd taken a call from a public relations agency asking if I'd gotten their fax announcing an ice cream social or something at the new store that they wanted me to cover.Yeah, sure, I'll be right there.

Union picketers, including Marc (cq) A. DeJarlais (cq), front left, and Phil Whiteside, front right, are protesting a variety of issues on the opening day of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Racine, Wednesday October 28, 1998, including the use of non-union construction labor; the alleged impact of the new store on local family-owned businesses; and the cost to employees of their benefits. Photo by Mark Hertzberg © 1998 Racine Journal Times

There must be an increasing lack of awareness of how to accommodate journalists in these national chains, because I had a similar experience this summer when a well known local pharmacy was sold to a big national chain that often puts their big grocery stores next to, or in combination with, their pharmacies.

The pharmacy is next to a Piggly Wiggly, a well-established grocery store in this neighborhood, and so a lot of people wondered if getting a Brand X pharmacy meant that we would soon have the Pig (as it is known) become a Brand Y bard store.

I had gotten a tip about the sale from someone I ran into when I was out for a bike ride. It took us weeks to nail the story down, though, because local folks weren't talking, and people from the chain would not return phone calls to our business editor. It wasn't that they wouldn't comment, no, they simply wouldn't return her calls. I stopped in the pharmacy when it changed hands to shoot the extensive remodeling that symbolized the change in ownership.

I had come to know this place as my neighborhood pharmacy where I had gone for 20 years and where I had been on a first name basis with the pharmacists. There were a number of new faces that day, however. I told the new Brand X manager that I wanted to take a picture of the remodeling, and he said that had to be cleared through the corporate offices. Fair enough. But he didn't have time to call them. Again, we are talking about free publicity for the store.

Could I have the number so I could call them?

No, he didn't have time to get it for me.

No, he didn't have time to get it for me. I knew they were headquartered in the area, so I radioed Jim Slosiarek and asked him to call and get me clearance while I waited in the parking lot. I left after a half hour of waiting for them to return a call.

When we eventually heard back from them, the P.R.. folks said we'd be welcome to come back in three weeks, but they didn't care to have a photo taken quite yet.

Sorry, folks, by then your store will be what we in the daily newspaper business call old news, and the bottom line is that we didn't get to tell our readers what we thought they needed to know except with a head shot of the store we'd run weeks before when the signs were changed. I know that there are plenty of small papers that shoot a chain's grand opening ceremony with all the local and corporate folks speaking and cutting ribbons, and there are plenty of small papers that would cover the pharmacy story as old news because that's what Brand X corporate would want.

But, P.R. Guys, we aren't like that. It's sad how many newspapers roll over and play dead for you, though, and let you continue to try to shape the news for us rather than let us work together on getting the results that we both need.            

 

November 9, 1998

Mark Hertzberg