Musings - On the editor's mind

Sunday is the start of the 84th annual National Newspaper Week. The Newspaper Association Managers started these promotions of the newspaper industry in the United States and Canada in 1940. This year, publishers are prompted to remind readers why journalism matters.

The relationship between readers and newspapers was very different in 1940. Back then news came into the community via two means – the radio or the newspaper – and only the newspaper was locally owned and downtown. Back then, just about everything but radio programs were local. Back then, your grandparents bought all their goods, just about, from apples to shirts, shoes and toothbrushes downtown. Back then, few families went very far from town for very long periods of time. Of course, there was mail order, using Sears Roebuck, J.C. Penney and Montgomery Wards and others.

Back then, with far less information and with our levels of knowledge on everything from, well apples to the solar system, much more limited – and primitive – more people knew many more actual facts about the topics at hand. And folks in the community could share, trust and believe that information.

Consider President Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats. Republicans might disagree and say he was exaggerating or misleading, but would they call him a liar? Would they spin a completely different narrative? Society and our culture was not only much slower 84 years ago, but also much more trusting and respectful.

In 1940 even small circulation newspapers were the Google of their day in their newssheds, both authoritative and valuable, highly profitable businesses. People’s attitudes toward newspapers in 1940 were similar to attitudes in 1897, when a New York City father could advise his daughter to write the editor of the New York Sun on a critical topic on her mind.

Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter:

DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.

Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

Papa says, “If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.”

Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

The “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” reply is the most published editorial, ever. It proves the power of newspapers to personally reach and touch people. It recalls the relationship readers once had with newspapers, their community and each other.

In our day and age, people can still choose to read newspapers to seek out facts large and small. People still decide to make Main Street important in their lives, or not, and how much to emphasize local relationships and how much to trust each other – or not.

In the end, newspapers don’t sell trust. They earn their readers’ trust and respect. And like every strong relationship, trust is built, maintained and extended by our everyday actions. For newspaper publishers, it is gathering, distilling, reporting, printing and standing by the facts and the truths found in the community, be they large or small.