From: Scott Keen
Columbus
I read with sadness that The Republic, first published in 1872, will soon be issuing print editions only two days a week.
I also realize people now get their “news” digitally, searching among the giant, amorphous, unregulated swamp of baloney modern technology places at their fingertips.
But local newspapers, once the backbone of many communities, are becoming increasingly rare.
Growing up, the newspaper industry touched me in many ways, from making paper mache art work in grade school, to reading the Sunday color funnies, repairing my bike on papers spread over the floor and reading about my hometown.
I delivered the South Bend Tribune for five years in a small northern Indiana city. Seven days a week, every day but Christmas and Thanksgiving. Pulling a sled through lake effect snow in winter, riding a bike when I could. I made some money and learned about responsibility.
The giant Sunday morning paper (bane of paperboys) contained magazine and color comic inserts. Families went to church, ate Sunday dinner and spent the afternoon digesting their paper(s), comparing notes and gleaning common topics of interest to talk about with neighbors at work the next day.
Later, I worked for the small paper in that town, doing everything from unloading newsprint rolls off trucks to reporting and photography. Hired as an additional reporter, the local town councils and school boards were surprised when a reporter (or anybody really) showed up at their meetings. They were even more surprised when I started reporting what they actually said in those meetings. A little sunshine apparently burned.
I still write cranky letters to the editor.
Listen. Newspapers must be careful that they print factual information, for ethical and legal reasons, and therefore newspapers have experienced journalists and editorial staffs that review and fact check what goes into print.
However, now anybody with an internet connection can be a “journalist,” and throw sensational garbage onto digital platforms protected by Section 230 (look it up), permitting them to publish flat- out horse hockey, anonymously authored, or from bots, or whoever, with zero responsibility or liability. Real news often gets buried in the digital effluvium.
Newspapers connect Americans. They provide jobs and a familiar raw material with infinite uses. But even more important, they provide a rallying point and a common voice for the community. A place to look for births and deaths, weddings and arrests (sometimes connected), legal ads, high school sports, local political hi-jinks, government gobbledegook and local viewpoints. A function newspapers served for centuries before radio, TV and the internet.
These small town bastions of “truth, justice and the American way” (really), the “Fourth Estate”, are struggling to survive in this age of instant gratification, sensationalism, flat out lies and the obsession with hit counts.
I genuinely hope The Republic, and all real newspapers, live long and prosper in the digital age. We need them.
But this old Boomer is worried and still “haz a sad.”
Support your local newspaper!
