Thursday, June 21, 2012

WHY I LOVE NEWSPAPERS


On June 9th of this year, the Tribune Chronicle, our local newspaper, celebrated its 200th year in print. When it was founded, NE Ohio was called the Connecticut Western Reserve and was largely a wilderness. Thomas Denny Webb, a young lawyer,came from Connecticut and settled in the small frontier town of Warren, Ohio. On June 9th in 1812, a few years after settling here, he started a four page weekly newspaper and called it The Trumpet of Fame. A little over a year later, it was the first newspaper in America to carry the news of Commodore Perry's victory at the Battle of Lake Erie.

Of course, the name and ownership has changed over its two hundred years. I've enjoyed reading the special edition covering the history of our newspaper and each of the townships in Trumbull County including not only their histories, but news that appeared in past editions of our newspaper. For instance, in the township north of where I grew up, the Bristol Women's Temperance Movement was upset about a local saloon operating in their township. They didn't want the men of their community "tempted" by the liquor. So on the night of June 7, 1958, approximately 20 women raided the bar and reportedly smashed barrels of whiskey, brandy and spiked lemonade destroying the establishment's fixtures in the process. The owner came at the women with a hatchet trying to stop them, but was eventually subdued. (I wish I knew how.) Because the local bar was on an embankment, the women were able to walk out the back door and pour the alcohol into the creek. Later they burned the owner in effigy. They must not have shut the business down permanently, if at all, because The Bristol Inn, opened in 1928, is still in business.

When I saw the old photos, including one of newspaper carriers from years ago lined up with their bicycles, I was reminded of my father, who had a paper route in the 1920's delivering the Western Reserve Chronicle during the several  years he lived in Warren with his aunt and two uncles.

My parents always got the daily paper and read it every evening switching different sections between them. We kids looked forward to reading the comics. I still enjoy them. They're like the dessert after the main course.  

I get a daily paper and hope it never goes entriely to an on-line paper. I know I could go there to read it, but I also know if I did, I'd skim through it and miss a lot. It wouldn't be the same as reading it with my meals or settling down with a cup of coffee and the newspapaer later. A lot of my writing ideas come from little bits of odd news. Besides, I'm a great clipper. If something interests me, I cut it out. For instance,  The Tribune Chronicle is printing weekly articles by local historians on soldiers from our area who fought in the Civil War. Because my next book is going to include a Civil War re-enactment in the plot, I've been cutting them out and saving them in a folder to go over later when I'm ready to create the characters and plot for my book. Funny cartoons? Clip them out. Obituaries of people I know or with some twist that would work great as a character? Clip them out. Hints from Heloise? Yep! Those are cut out, too, if its something I'd not thought of or already do. There are often great recipes in the newspaper, interesting places to visit, book reviews of a book I might like to read, clip them out. Annie's Mailbox has all sorts of strange lettrs to Annie (The women who took over for Ann Landers.) A lot of good characters and plot twists can be found there.

If I were forced to read the paper on line, I would also miss other aspects of a print paper. Like what would I line the floor of my bird cages with when I cleaned them? They're great to use to collect the messy tomato skins when canning tomatoes or potato peels when paring lots of potatoes for a large dinner, and the whole package can go straight into the compost  area. They're much better than paper towels for cleaning windows. Yes, one's hands get a little black, but hands are washable and the windows shine. That's another hint from Heloise, by the way. But probably my favorite use for used newspapers is mulching my garden. I spread thick layer of wet newspapers where I want to control weeds, like around the tomatoes, and cover the newspapers with straw or chopped leaves. It looks nice and is excellent for weed control.And when I have too many used newspapers, I take them to the recycling center. Veterinary clinics and animal rescue places can use them, too.

The Tribune Chronicle had a weekend of great events planned for its 200th birthday. Unfortunately, I was out of town and couldn't attend any of them, although I would have loved being a part of it. One I particularly wished I could have attended was a re-enactment of the Scopes "monkey" Trial in our beautiful courthouse with two scenes from the play "Inherit theWind". An actor portrayed Clarence Darrow, a local lawyer, who practiced his profession in our courthouse.

A combination of reading my daily paper, TIME magazine and listening to NPR makes me feel I'm better informed about what's going on in the world and in my communiity than I would be if I didn't have those three news sources, but of the three, the one I would miss most would be my daily paper. Yes, I can't imagine life without NPR, but I'm not always near a radio to hear everything, and the newspaper is always there patiently waiting for me to pick it up when I have time. Even when I've been away for days, it's there for me to catch up on what's been happening while I've been gone.

What about you?  How do you get your news?                                                                                                                                                    

10 comments:

  1. I can't imagine Sunday morning without reading a print newspaper! There's something rather wonderful about thumbing through the paper. Plus, it's easy to miss interesting articles when I read news online.

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  2. I so agree with you, Kara. Sunday morning is meant to be a relaxing time with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper.

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  3. Many small papers have a "police blotter" section, which is always a great read.

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  4. I think my Internet problems are solved!

    I would like to be able to say that I read the newspaper everyday (and we do subscribe), but I don't have time. Sunday mornings I reserve for writing, some of the few hours during the weekend when I'm alone since everyone else is either sleeping or in church.

    I get a lot of my news online. Unfortunately, so much online news is geared to the entertainment scene that I get tired of it. I have the New York Times delivered to my email everyday and I get updates from The Washington Post in the afternoon. Guess I really am an online junkie.

    My husband puts the newspaper on our kitchen island, which is framed in painted white wood. I do wish newspaper ink wasn't so transferable!

    When doing research, I can think of no better source but the newspaper. I have to admit though, it isn't my favorite source.

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  5. I love printed newspapers--as they used to be for most of my life. Since the big corporations took over the business, however, it's hard to find a good one outside of NYC or DC.

    The papers we grew up with were owned by wealthy families (or, in the case of the Kansas City Star and others, by their employees). These owners were satisfied with a modest profit margin and specialized in teams of investigative reporters for those stories that took lots of digging. They had a correspondent in NY, DC, Europe, and Asia. even small newspapers like the Emporia, KS, paper did this.

    The corporations took them over, some by hostile take-over, and immediately got rid of the investigative teams that could take months to follow a story, got rid of foreign correspondents. They laid off reporters and editors with years of experience and only replaced a few with lesser-paid inexperienced writers. All this time, they were also shrinking the space for actual news, and many articles became ads in disguise--or at least infomercials.

    They did all this in the name of greater profits and wound up killing the whole industry, a case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

    I still read the NY Times and sometimes Washington Post online. There's nothing like a good paper newspaper on a Sunday morning as you drink coffee or tea. There just aren't many of them left.

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  6. You're right about the police blotters, Warren. It's something I go over occasionally.

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  7. Actually, EB, the Sunday edition is my least favorite one. It seems to be filled too much with the stuff that caters to those who only get the Sunday paper. If I had time, I'd enjoy reading the New York Times or the Washington Post. As it is, my Washington State sister, sends me interesting articles from the NYT that I enjoy reading.

    As it is for reading the newspaper
    online, I seem to spend too much time there now just reading the Guppy Digests and other emails I receive.

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  8. Linda, you are so right about how the big corporations have ruined small town newspapers in so many ways. We used to have local investigative reporters, but no more. I'm not sure if our paper ever had foreign correspondents or not, but they haven't had any in my memory. Of course, we're not that big a city like your city is.
    The good reporting is one of the reasons I like NPR, and when I take time to turn on the TV, The PBS News Hour. Excellent reporting there.

    Some day when I feel I'm really retired, :-), I want to subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post, too.

    One of the things I do dislike about my local paper is their political bias, but that's been a long time fault of theirs. They print far more conservative columnists than they do middle of the road or liberals. They're own editorials tend to support the Republicans more often than the Democrats in this largely Democratic area.

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  9. I agree, Gloria. I'd hate to see printed newspapers disappear from our lives. Just as we have radio and TV, I think we need books, magazines, and newspapers available to us on line and in print.

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  10. I'm glad there are others who agree with me, too. Of course, I can remember a time when it was predicted that radio would be a thing of the past once TV came. Fortunately, that didn't happen.

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