Lawrence Hall
3 September 2023
All the News That’s Fit to Beam Me Up, Scotty
We read on newsprint that newsprint is soon to be no
more, and so the East Texas Banner from Kirbyville, Texas will
appear only via electrons on your personal device.
The finest image of a small-town newspaper is in a
painting by Norman Rockwell [Norman Rockwell Visits a Country Editor | The Saturday
Evening Post]. We see the venerable old editor pounding out a story
on his antique Underwood beneath a photograph of benevolent Franklin D.
Roosevelt. A printer’s assistant wearing his big brother’s sailor hat (the time
is 1946) hastily delivers copy to a pretty typist who flirts with him. The wall
is a catalogue of objects we never see anymore: electric lights in sconces, a
pencil sharpener, documents pinned on a spindle, and a page-a-day calendar. The
telephone includes a wooden box with two bells, the in and out trays are a
hopeless mess, and the venetian blinds are long past needing replacement.
I suppose now all the work shown in this humble newspaper
office would be accomplished via people in three different locations communicating
in only two-dimensions through big Orwellian telescreens.
And I don’t think there is a pencil sharpener at the Banner
office; computer cursors don’t need sharpening.
But the method of transmission is not important; what is
important is that a rural community has a private-enterprise voice for and of
the people, helmed by an editor and a staff who have the news and the desire to
report it in their blood (metaphorically, of course).
Tyrants and bullies do not like newspapers; the First
Amendment certainly reads well but the subsequent history of this nation is
littered with the wreckage of smashed printing presses, burnt newspaper
offices, and occasionally the corpse of editors who upset some local Boss
Tweed.
Sadly, this is not only history. Last month the self-styled
bosses in Marion, Kansas raided the Marion County Record based on rumors
and gossip. An illegal search warrant was signed off by a magistrate and some
of the tubbiest Barney Fifes you ever saw on security cameras waddled in to raid
the newspaper office and carry off computers, cell ‘phones, and paperwork. The
lads then raided two private homes, bullied a 98-year-old woman (who died the
next day), and made off with more electronics and paperwork, most of it
personal, in a violation of the 4th Amendment.
A corrupt Kansas police department in its unlawful acts
against a small-town newspaper indicates the continuing need for small-town
newspapers everywhere.
I could (and do) mutter about the reality that not all
change is good, but we are blessed in continuing to have our good ol’ hometown
newspaper. High school graduations,
homecoming parades, weddings, funerals, births, reunions, and all the other
rites of passage obtain even without a newspaper, but reading about them and
seeing the photographs just seems to make them more official.
Access to the now electrical East Texas Banner, according
to Sandi Saulsbury, can be made by typing in www.easttexasbanner.com in the top
bar of your personal Orwellian telescreen. Once in you can read the news and,
if you wish, easily subscribe so that in the future the weekly edition appears
on your machine.
The gadgetry has changed, but the absolute need for a
free press in a free nation can never change. Reading your local newspaper is
not only informative and entertaining, it can also be considered a civic duty.
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