Mischke bought the Villager in December of 1970. He soon learned that getting the Villager back on its financial feet would be a daunting task. The first issue under Mischke's ownership actually lost money.
"He told me it might be rough at first--the first five years or so," said Mischke's wife, Jeanette, and mother of their eight children, then ages 6 to 18. "But running his own newspaper was something he always wanted to do. We knew it was unlikely he'd get another chance."
"What motivated him to buy the Villager was his love for the newspaper business," said Michael Mischke, 54, Maurice's son and successor as Villager publisher. "He liked the idea of being a big fish in a small pond, he liked the neighborhood, and he liked being in a position to make a difference in the lives of his readers and advertisers."
Jeanette Mischke joined the Villager staff as classified ad manager in March of 1975. Michael was named editor in May of 1976, having served as editor of the St. John's student newspaper during his senior year, just as his father had done 29 years before.
The ensuing years brought many changes. Increasing advertising revenue resulted in bigger papers and dramatic improvements in both the editorial product and the newspaper's design. That growth, in turn, prompted a search for larger quarters to house a larger staff and, for the first time, the paper's own production facilities.
The Snelling Avenue building that now houses the business came on the market in 1981 at a time when the prime lending rate was 21 percent. With the assistance of the Highland Bank, the Villager was approved for the first and only lower-interest Minnesota Small Business Finance Agency loan the state would make.
Even as circulation of the Villager continued to grow, first to 36,000, then to 45,000, another opportunity presented itself with the purchase of an adjacent neighborhood newspaper, the Grand Gazette, in August 1984. In November 1985, the Villager and Gazette were incorporated as businesses of Villager Communications Inc., with Maurice as chairman and treasurer, Michael as president and Jeanette as secretary.
Jeanette Mischke retired from the family business in January 1989. Health problems told Maurice he should do likewise, "but he never got around to it," Michael said. Maurice died on August 19, 1991.
As publisher and sole stockholder of Villager Communications Inc. since that time, Michael, with the assistance of righthand man and general manager John Rauch, has seen the company through three recessions, several key staff changes, the purchase of greatly enhanced production equipment, and the folding of the company's graphics arts division.
"The graphics division was created primarily to produce the papers," Mischke said. "With the efficiencies we realized from constantly updated hardware and software, and with the talents of all of those who helped produce our newspapers, we no longer needed a graphics division. Besides, it was losing money."
The Gazette wasn't losing money in August 2003 when it became Avenues, St. Paul's News & Arts Monthly. However, the Gazette was having a hard time competing with its older, larger and twice as frequently published sister newspaper. By that time the Gazette had grown from 12,000 to 22,000 in circulation.
Rather than fold the Gazette into the Villager, Mischke opted to relaunch it as Avenues, a publication more suited to complement the Villager. According to Mischke, 2003-2006 were the best revenue-producing years the business had ever seen. However, by 2007 a changing media landscape dictated a new approach to local newspapering. With a series of ownership changes and staff layoffs and buyouts at the Twin Cities' two daily newspapers, Mischke decided it was an opportune time to do what his father had contemplated doing back in 1982 when he bought the Gazette. He folded Avenues into a redesigned Villager, expanding the circulation of what was already the largest neighborhood newspaper in the Twin Cities to 60,000 copies.
According to Mischke, the larger Villager created a better value for advertisers, simplified sales and marketing, expanded the door-to-door and newsstand distribution to the Summit-University neighborhood and downtown, and combined the best design and editorial content of both newspapers, including the use of full color.
Even with increasing competition in all facets of the media business, the Villager is now in an even better position to thrive in the niche it occupies in the local marketplace, according to Mischke. "The reason the Villager was born is the same reason it exists today," he said. "There's a strong demand for news and advertising of a distinctly local nature, and though we know we can always improve, the staff here and the stable of freelance talent we've attracted are capable of meeting that demand as well or better than anyone."
According to Mischke, the future of neighborhood newspapers hinges largely on the future of the neighborhoods they serve. "What makes the Villager successful," he said, "is our ability to produce a quality newspaper with a depth and breadth of local news coverage that the daily newspapers can't hope to match, to deliver that newspaper to an attractive, loyal readership, and to deliver that readership to a solid base of locally owned businesses that depend on those readers as loyal customers.
"We continue to do that and, though you won't see me sitting here 57 years from now, you'll still see the Villager."