My column from today's paper. I know I complain sometimes about LDR but that's only because I want it to be good. But aside from that I am such a believer in small town newspapers, I think they are very important.****************
Some people, it is said, are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. That was not me. But I had something better. I was born with a pen in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
I cannot remember when I have not loved newspapers. Once I had mastered a few words from “Dick and Jane” in the first grade reading books at the country school in Washington District where I began my education under the able tutelage of Mrs. Ruth Garrett, I knew I had found my calling to become a lifelong reader.
I found an old newspaper in the farmhouse where I lived. I don’t remember much about those early days of my life but I remember that newspaper and I”m sure it was the first one I ever saw. It was a rarity in our home, and books were not readily available either.
My eyes fastened on a strange looking word with a little mark in it and I asked my mother, who explained it was a “contraction”. I don’t think we had studied contractions in my Dick and Jane book at school and the word apostrophe hadn’t come up either. It may sound trite but everything I know I learned from a newspaper!
Later, in Mrs. Veda Esther Smith’s class on English composition, she gave us an assignment to write a brief newspaper article for the community news page. (I think in those days it was called the Society page.) It was to be an exercise in writing , spelling and grammar, and for most of my classmates it was just a pretend article. But I wrote about a recent youth activity we had had in the church I attended and Mrs. Smith thought it was so good, it deserved to be printed.
She took me, along with a few other students, on a field trip to the old office of the Lebanon Rustic Republican on West Commercial and marched us over to the desk of Billie Lee Walstrom where she introduced us, and Billie Lee told us she would print our articles in the newspaper.
I was so excited and couldn’t wait to tell my family, but I was even more excited when they told me I was related to Billie Lee Walstrom. Wow! I was related to a real celebrity, an important newspaper person!
When my little one-paragraph article came out on the Society page a few days later, you would have thought I was up there in the ranks of Ernest Hemingway, Harold Bell Wright, and William Shakespeare.
In 1983 I received a call from the Springfield News Leader. They wanted to hire me to do a weekly column of social commentary and political opinion for their newspaper. I continued to do that for the next nine years until my regular “day job” required more time and I had to give the newspaper column up.
But my love for newspapers has never diminished. My husband and I subscribe to the Springfield News-Leader and the Wall Street Journal so they will be available to his barber shop customers, as well as two subscriptions to the Lebanon Daily Record because his customers want to have it available to them all day and I’m not about to wait until he brings the other two home in the evening to get my
daily fill of what’s going on in Lebanon.
I’m not in denial about what’s happening everywhere with regard to the local hometown newspaper. We live in a digitalized world. I get it. And newspapers, just like books and magazines, are becoming more expensive all the time.
So many people nowadays are used to getting all their news from other media, including television, computers, tablets and smartphones. I understand that, too. And they have their place as far as major national and world events are concerned. You want a fight from me? Just try to take my cable news channel away from me. But if you think you can get the Lebanon news from the three Springfield TV channels, you are mistaken.
If you are going to live in a community and interact with your neighbors, you need to read the local paper. If you run a business and need to get the word out about your product or services and keep up with your customers and their interests, you need to read the local paper. If you pastor a church, you need to read the local paper.
Kirk Pearce, through his church news pages, was so helpful when my husband and I started a church out in the country, and I attribute much of its growth to the free promotion given to our church through the years from the newspaper. My congregation loved it when pictures and clippings of them and their family were posted on the church bulletin board almost as soon as they appeared in the newspaper.
I like it that the Lebanon Daily Record has begun doing more feature stories on local people and businesses. In the long run, that’s really its purpose. Many of us drive by these places every day and think we know what they sell or manufacture but then we read about them in the paper and realize there are lots of things we didn’t know about them - things that pique our curiosity and interest. The addition of pictures to the church news and county correspondents has been great. Very few of these people look like I imagined they would look.
Yes, we have our faults as a small town and we would prefer not to have to read about them, but that is local news, too, and it’s the responsibility of the newspaper to cover it.
When all is said and done, and we contemplate our news options, there is really nothing more comfortable and pleasant than sitting down with your feet up and a cup of coffee at your side, enjoying the tangible experience of opening up the newspaper, maybe getting a little newsprint on your hands, hearing it crinkle as you spread the pages, and just taking your time reading about the people and places you know and love.
Some people, it is said, are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. That was not me. But I had something better. I was born with a pen in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
I cannot remember when I have not loved newspapers. Once I had mastered a few words from “Dick and Jane” in the first grade reading books at the country school in Washington District where I began my education under the able tutelage of Mrs. Ruth Garrett, I knew I had found my calling to become a lifelong reader.
I found an old newspaper in the farmhouse where I lived. I don’t remember much about those early days of my life but I remember that newspaper and I”m sure it was the first one I ever saw. It was a rarity in our home, and books were not readily available either.
My eyes fastened on a strange looking word with a little mark in it and I asked my mother, who explained it was a “contraction”. I don’t think we had studied contractions in my Dick and Jane book at school and the word apostrophe hadn’t come up either. It may sound trite but everything I know I learned from a newspaper!
Later, in Mrs. Veda Esther Smith’s class on English composition, she gave us an assignment to write a brief newspaper article for the community news page. (I think in those days it was called the Society page.) It was to be an exercise in writing , spelling and grammar, and for most of my classmates it was just a pretend article. But I wrote about a recent youth activity we had had in the church I attended and Mrs. Smith thought it was so good, it deserved to be printed.
She took me, along with a few other students, on a field trip to the old office of the Lebanon Rustic Republican on West Commercial and marched us over to the desk of Billie Lee Walstrom where she introduced us, and Billie Lee told us she would print our articles in the newspaper.
I was so excited and couldn’t wait to tell my family, but I was even more excited when they told me I was related to Billie Lee Walstrom. Wow! I was related to a real celebrity, an important newspaper person!
When my little one-paragraph article came out on the Society page a few days later, you would have thought I was up there in the ranks of Ernest Hemingway, Harold Bell Wright, and William Shakespeare.
In 1983 I received a call from the Springfield News Leader. They wanted to hire me to do a weekly column of social commentary and political opinion for their newspaper. I continued to do that for the next nine years until my regular “day job” required more time and I had to give the newspaper column up.
But my love for newspapers has never diminished. My husband and I subscribe to the Springfield News-Leader and the Wall Street Journal so they will be available to his barber shop customers, as well as two subscriptions to the Lebanon Daily Record because his customers want to have it available to them all day and I’m not about to wait until he brings the other two home in the evening to get my
daily fill of what’s going on in Lebanon.
I’m not in denial about what’s happening everywhere with regard to the local hometown newspaper. We live in a digitalized world. I get it. And newspapers, just like books and magazines, are becoming more expensive all the time.
So many people nowadays are used to getting all their news from other media, including television, computers, tablets and smartphones. I understand that, too. And they have their place as far as major national and world events are concerned. You want a fight from me? Just try to take my cable news channel away from me. But if you think you can get the Lebanon news from the three Springfield TV channels, you are mistaken.
If you are going to live in a community and interact with your neighbors, you need to read the local paper. If you run a business and need to get the word out about your product or services and keep up with your customers and their interests, you need to read the local paper. If you pastor a church, you need to read the local paper.
Kirk Pearce, through his church news pages, was so helpful when my husband and I started a church out in the country, and I attribute much of its growth to the free promotion given to our church through the years from the newspaper. My congregation loved it when pictures and clippings of them and their family were posted on the church bulletin board almost as soon as they appeared in the newspaper.
I like it that the Lebanon Daily Record has begun doing more feature stories on local people and businesses. In the long run, that’s really its purpose. Many of us drive by these places every day and think we know what they sell or manufacture but then we read about them in the paper and realize there are lots of things we didn’t know about them - things that pique our curiosity and interest. The addition of pictures to the church news and county correspondents has been great. Very few of these people look like I imagined they would look.
Yes, we have our faults as a small town and we would prefer not to have to read about them, but that is local news, too, and it’s the responsibility of the newspaper to cover it.
When all is said and done, and we contemplate our news options, there is really nothing more comfortable and pleasant than sitting down with your feet up and a cup of coffee at your side, enjoying the tangible experience of opening up the newspaper, maybe getting a little newsprint on your hands, hearing it crinkle as you spread the pages, and just taking your time reading about the people and places you know and love.
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