While on vacation I read various interpretations of why newspapers are suffering. Or dead. Most of the writers lamented the loss of Old World ways and habits, the way they remember life when they were young and ate what was served or anything they found in the dirt.
The reason newspapers are struggling is blamed on the Internet, which although a marvelous communication conveyance, isn’t the only car to drive.
The Internet is fast. It’s cheap. It’s universal. It educates and admonishes and keeps very close tabs on its users. It can be as comforting as pears poached in brandy, stuffed with mascarpone and dipped in dark chocolate. Or not.
The Internet lets us know within minutes where there’s a crisis and what’s being done about it. But the Internet is also mostly unregulated. Those who write on the Internet are not necessarily held accountable for what they put out there, libelous or not, relying on freedom of speech as a right to say anything and being beholden to no one.
Print news in Eureka Springs is not dead. Or dying. Or even sick or tardy.
Writers are held to the tradition of sharing what they know and presenting it in the most proper and palatable way they know how. Newspapers print the names, business address and phone number of who’s responsible for content in every issue. Try to find contact information for a person willing to take responsibility on the Internet.
Many of us, not all of us, read news, buy a cotton robe, check ball scores, refresh our memory of why there’s a federal reserve bank that’s accountable to no one, and scrutinize recipes. All online, all within seconds. That makes sense.
But in this 10-page broadsheet newspaper that’s delivered on Wednesdays, a reader can find local fishing conditions, nighttime entertainment, native plant identification and their uses, who you sort of knew who died, a public record of calls to the police department, and twice a month we even have current interest rates on a new Subaru.
For heaven’s sake, when I started at the Eureka Springs Times-Echo I went to city hall every week and copied, by hand, every marriage license issued in the city that week. And it was printed! Really?
Yes. It was what happened that week that brought revenue to this town. It was mindless to write and read, but also charming in a 1997 way.
Times have changed, technology rules, but in the past month we have seen downtown so crowded you’d think we were giving things away. People feel good in these mountains. Those of us who live here might be kind of loony tunes, but we’re also dependable and good-natured.
And if one person reads this and believes it, and tells two people, and then they tell two more people each, and those eight do the same, then once again on those, we’re up to one percent of our population. Those are the people know we don’t just suck up to advertisers and other important people except when we do.
There are times when thought grenades are so explosive we think our minds gave birth to a baby. It comes down to believing that excellence will always find an audience, so we strive for excellence because we all deserve that.
That math part might not be all that excellent, but you know what we mean.
Hope this New Year brings you a hatful of wishes, and if you want to find out what happened last week and what might happen next week in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, we’re your girls.