“It’s not because we’re so powerful; it’s because information is so powerful.”
—Canadian Record publisher Laurie Brown to Judy Woodruff on “PBS News-Hour,” Aug. 2, 2023
If you live in a small town—as most of you do who are reading this— you’ve no doubt seen how swiftly hearsay can steal a march on truth. So-and-so got fired from their job. I heard she’s expecting again. My neighbor saw that guy’s car parked behind the vacant house next door. Those kids had been out drinking at a party before the wreck.
Idle gossip, right? Maybe. Consider these: I’ll bet you anything that fire was set deliberately. Did you see how much our taxes are going to go up? So-and-so died, had you heard about that?
There might well be some kernel of fact in any of those statements. And there might be a bigger issue that we, as members of a democratic and collaborative society, care about.
So whose job is it to get and share the whole story, with verifiable facts?
Your local news outlet. In rural counties like ours, it’s the job of the weekly newspaper.
We’re here to sift fact from the rumor mill.
We’re here to hold public servants—whether elected or hired—accountable.
We’re here to ensure that your local government conducts its business in full view of citizens.
We’re here to share the unpleasant details about crimes.
We’re here to help unpack complex topics that matter in all our daily lives.
We’re here as the “first draft of history” to publish the archival record of births, marriages, milestones, deaths.
That’s a tall order for a small newspaper staff—in the twenty-first century, even as it was in pioneer days when enterprising publisher/printers brought their presses to fledging towns by wagon. Often, the weekly newspapers that still survive carry out their vital mission with three, sometimes two, sometimes a lone journalist striving to cover every beat.
I watched with sympathy last week as residents of tiny Canadian, Texas, spoke out on national television about the loss of their community’s longstanding, multi-generational, awardwinning, and unstintingly courageous printed newspaper.
Laurie Ezell Brown, publisher of The Canadian Record, captured the essence of our shared mission as community journalists: “We have sometimes helped good things happen and we often stopped bad things from happening. And it’s not because we’re so powerful. It’s because information is powerful.”
When you read and patronize your local newspaper, you’re a vital part of that mission yourselves. Keep the calls and comments and news tips coming. Keep your advertising support and subscriptions coming. Keep discussing and debating, in your courthouses and coffee klatches, the topics you read every week in these pages.
As our West Texas group ofnewspapersnowexpands to serve Garza and Knox Counties we are more than hopeful of our survival— we’re confident. We’re committed to covering the news, issues and commentary in 10 contiguous counties with the help of each paper’s local team. Together, we’ll seek the truth.
Barbara Brannon, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, and a graduate of Georgia College and the University of South Carolina, has called Texas home for some fifteen years. Following a career in publishing, teaching, research and writing, since 2018 she has co-owned and managed, with Kay Ellington, a group of West Texas weekly newspapers.
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