Community newspapers play vital role

Once upon a time, news was the province of traveling minstrels, bringing word of the latest royal intrigue or political conquest to the masses, one village at a time.

Then, someone thought of enscribing the written word on paper, and sending limitless copies around the kingdom and giving far-flung citizens common knowledge of current goings-on. Add Gutenberg's invention of movable type and modern presses, and newspapers were the state of the art when it comes to mass communications.

Then, someone thought of attaching a battery to wires and sending information, a dot and a dash at a time, as far as the electricity could carry it.

The death of the newspaper? Not by any means; in fact, the name of one of our neighboring daily newspapers, the North Platte Telegraph, is a tribute to the marriage of print and electronic technologies.

Then along came moving pictures, radio and television. Rather than supplant the old technology, each enhanced the other, with television broadcasting movies, radio stars moving their shows to television, radio promoting MTV rockstars and newspapers reporting on them all.

Then someone thought of connecting computers to telephone lines, and the Internet was born.

The new medium has only begun to be explored, but like earlier breakthroughs, it is supplementing, rather than supplanting the technologies that came before it. In the end, it is the news and entertainment consumer who benefits from each advancement.

Newspapers, like the other media, are making good use of the Internet to open up audiences unreachable in earlier days. Already leaders when it comes to in-depth written stories and photos, newspapers have no reason not to offer video and audio through their Web sites as well.

Elsewhere in this issue is a list of awards won by area newspapers, including a couple by this one, at last weekend's annual meeting of the Nebraska Press Association and Associated Press in Kearney.

Congratulations to our neighboring papers for receiving the recognition they so richly deserve. We have a feeling that many others didn't receive awards because they were too busy putting out quality newspapers to take the time to prepare their entries!

It was encouraging to see the number of young people involved in the proud industry of newspapering, including several in Southwest Nebraska. They were often the ones asking the most questions about new technology like the latest in digital photography and new desktop publishing software.

They will be the ones who make sure that local community newspapers are still on the job, bringing hometown folks near and far together, and helping nurture the exchange of ideas necessary for moving our society forward.