As the News-Press entered its 35th year of consecutive weekly publication this spring (over 1,750 consecutive editions since March 1991), we have labored against enormous headwinds that have wiped out almost all competitor publications not only in this region but nationwide. There are three prevailing reasons why we’ve tried so hard to stay in the game to this point.
The first, of course, relates to the importance of newspapers in general for the preservation of democracy. The public’s right to know is an indispensable cornerstone of a successful democracy and newspapers have been the mechanism for this since it can be argued that the invention by Gutenberg of moveable type in the latter part of the 1400s was the key for the launch of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and by virtue of them, the American revolution and Constitution, the global lynchpins of democracy. It enabled the public direct access to texts, not filtered through an intermediary class, and also heralded a universalizing influence toward learning and scientific invention more generally.
Whereas this fundamental right has been taken for granted for so many years since Benjamin Franklin first used a printing press to launch what turned into the American revolution, its importance is better appreciated when would-be tyrants and authoritarian leaders begin denouncing it and calling it, as Trump frequently has, “the enemy of the people.” In our case, while we can hardly lay claim to perfection, we adopted from the outset a seven-point platform printed on the editorial page of every edition drafted originally in the 1920s by the owner of the west coast newspaper that our founder, owner and editor began his career working for: “Clean, fearless and fair!”
The second reason is the importance of the printed word in an era when an electronic seems to offer such an easier and inexpensive alternative. Studies have shown over and over that information is not retained nearly as well when it comes in the form of an ephemeral electronic image instead of something that can be referred back to, annotated, clipped and saved.
Third, it is critical that there be accountability and community vetting of shared information. Sadly we now live in an age when many newspaper owners feel they must kowtow to authoritarian political leaders at the expense of honest reporting.
We at the News-Press retain a capacity for a wide ranging expansion of our newspaper, its influence and potential to buoy up the dire straits confronting so many of us in this region, but at the same time we are being squeezed to the max. We will not make it without direct reader support, even as there is so much more we could do. Won’t you help? Please go to our website, fcnp.com, where contributions can be made online. Become part of a legion of citizens stepping up to fight for the values we all share, won’t you? Please be generous for the sake of democracy.
