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Editorial: Consider life without the newspaper

October 01, 2010

Sunday begins a week dear to our hearts. We will celebrate it mostly by just doing what we do.

National Newspaper Week is Oct. 3-9. You will see reminders placed here and there throughout the paper, perhaps in the form of advertisements we call “house ads,” but certainly on this page, where a couple of columns will publish about our business and the times in which we struggle.

We ask only that you take a moment or two next week to ponder the role of the newspaper in your community, whether that is The Advocate-Messenger, a larger daily or the weekly in your small town. We ask that you ponder as well the role of a free press and consider what your life might be like without it.

The people who work for newspapers, whether they sell ads or write stories, solicit subscriptions or operate the press, are members of the communities their newspapers cover. They take pride in the role their product plays in a free society, even though it sometimes is an unpopular one.

They know that besides the newsroom’s watchdog role toward local government, the newspaper provides accounts of the personal milestones in the lives of individuals and families — from births to weddings to anniversaries to achievements, and even deaths. It offers advertisements from local businesses, classifieds for yard sales and jobs and household items, and it covers the ever-popular local sports and cultural events. It provides a forum for readers to air their opinions and grievances, even if they criticize the newspaper itself. How many businesses do you know of that publish the complaints of their customers?

Like a mirror into a community’s soul, the newspaper shows the good side and the bad, the blemishes and the beauty. Our role is to inform, and we take it seriously, understanding that our work is the first draft of history. Just ask the many people researching their family trees. Their work inevitably brings them to our product on record in the microfilm and digital archives of libraries across the nation.

So, next week, if you will, give us a minute or two. We’ll continue to do all we can to make it worth your while.

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