“Small newspapers like ours, we’re kind of the last
vestige for collective or common truth, or trust.
“Pretty much everything in our paper you’re one or two
degrees of separation away from personally, so you know it to be true because
you were there — you were at the game, or you see an obituary and it’s somebody
you were connected to. . . .
“We own the paper, but in a very real sense, I’ve always
looked at it like I’m a temporary steward of the paper. At the end of the day,
it really belongs to the community.”
—Douglas Burns, co-owner, Carroll (Iowa) Times
Herald, “A
small-town Iowa newspaper brought down a cop. His failed lawsuit has now put
the paper in financial peril,” The Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2019.
• Editorial Comment: An endangered species.
PeezPix
The Corkscrew Tree, Prairie Creek Redwood
State Park
FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to
2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday
morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you
to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to
ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email
address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t
necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.)
“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words
are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you
can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
No comments:
Post a Comment