I grew up in a family, and community, which revered our small-town newspaper. We read it, we discussed it and we argued about it when we thought the viewpoint was flawed.
We knew the writers. We saw them at gatherings, they were the friends of my parents and the parents of my classmates. In other words, they were people just like us.
One of the journalists, a woman named Elane, covered each of the school events. Every time I saw her it felt like a celebrity was in the room. She would enter, camera hung about her neck, notepad in her hand, looking for all the world like a real reporter – because that’s what she was. And whether she was covering breaking news or a school play, she made you feel like she was really interested in what you had to say, like your story was important – like you were important.
And once the articles were printed, we cut them from the pages, pasted them into scrapbooks or filed them away for the next generation, proof that we had once done something worth remembering.
When my grandmother died, I found heaps of those sepia-toned relics, notes scribbled into the margins, written in her delicate hand. I recognized my own, younger face in several, my name still attached to its maidenhood. I tucked them away, relics of a bygone time when I could search the pages of the paper, confident that I would recognize nearly every name. When I left home for college, I missed that.
And then I moved to Silverton and was giddy to discover that here was a small-town paper, reminiscent of the one I’d left behind. From it I learned about my new community, the neighbors, businesses, schools and events. I joked with my husband that I wouldn’t truly belong to this place until the day I found my own name.
Now of course my wish has been granted hundreds of times over as I have become my own version of Elane, walking into auditoriums, camera around my neck, notebook in my hand, greeting people I know from other gatherings, friends whose kids go to school with mine.
It has been a privilege, sharing this community’s stories, revealing what might otherwise go unnoticed. And it’s one I don’t plan to give up any time soon. Because, in this digital age of information overload, I feel so lucky to live in a place where so many still see the value in interacting with their local news, in frequenting the businesses they see in the ads, in congratulating their neighbor who just had a baby, in mourning with a friend who just lost a parent.
And I’m happy to know that so many still read the paper in print and not just on a computer screen. It brings a lump to my throat to see the neat bundles of papers stacked in the waiting rooms, to have people stop me in the streets to tell me that, not only did they like what they read, but that they cut out the article, pasted it in a scrap book and put it away for the next generation to find.
