Community newspapers: Everything in them is important to someone

Without much fanfare, newspapers across America celebrated National Newspaper Week, from Monday, Oct. 7, 2018, through Saturday, Oct. 13, 2018.

As usual, I’m a little late getting around to saying something about newspapers, which are important to me since they have provided my life-long professional career.

As a newsman, the last couple of years have been tough as I read and see the information provided by newspapers referred to as “fake news.”

Yes, I’ll admit, mistakes are made. Although I try hard to be 100 percent accurate in my reporting, I screw up from time to time. Sometimes I spell names wrong and at other times I get quotations wrong because I don’t voice record interviews like most young journalists do today. Instead, I rely on notes scribbled in my close-at-hand spiral notebook.

Despite my multiple mess-ups during the past 57 years of newspapering, I still agree with Matt Geiger when he says, “People sometimes ask me why community newspapers are important. My reply is always the same. It’s because everything in those papers is important to someone. Maybe the ribbon cutting isn’t flashy enough to go viral, and maybe the Thanksgiving turkey recipe is not going to change culinary trends across the nation. But these things, these small things in communities across the country and across the world, are what gives meaning and purpose to all of our lives.”

I believe, as does Mr. Geiger, that “Journalism matters, now more than ever, because roughly half the world’s population lives in small communities, and thanks to their newspaper, they see themselves and the ones they love.”