I grew up in Petaluma, California, where most people get their news from the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat or the San Francisco Chronicle, but that doesn’t stop the local newspaper, the Argus-Courier, from publishing local news a couple times a week. It is possibly the least useful newspaper ever, but my parents were guilted into subscribing it for years because you have to support local businesses, right?
Anyway, for years and years they ran a column by this guy, Bill Soberanes, who was something of a local character. He lived on one of the main streets in town, so it was a common sight to see him sitting on his porch most days. His columns were such an institution they’d have an annual write-alike contest. Almost every sentence began with “You’re a real old-timer if you remember…” Remember when the library had five palm trees on the lawn? Remember when Joe Corda’s restaurant on Kentucky Street closed? Remember that fire at the old hatchery on Lakeview Highway? NO! No one remembers those things, Bill! Only you do! (He also founded the World Wristwrestling Competition, for which he has a bust downtown.) Somehow, his column managed to be both the best and the worst* of small circulation newspapers. A quick google reveals he died in March. I’m inexplicably sad to read it.
*Okay, I found a collection of some of his columns here, and now I’m inclined to just put him in the worst column. Yikes.
Guilty of most of them, though we also do issue stories, featues, whatever breaking news comes our way, and some investigative journalism as well A daily newpaper in a town of 10,000 needs to find a lot of copy.
I am proud of our editor, though. He has an absolute cast-iron rule: NO CHECK-PASSING PHOTOS. That helps a great deal.
[Short hijack] Back in the late 1960s I worked for a radio station - the only one licensed to the small town. The newspaper in the town was a weekly, so one of more unusual bits of our local programming was to read obituaries and funeral notices on the air. Because it was entirely possible for someone who died at the wrong time of the week to have his or her funeral scheduled before the next issue of the weekly was published. Ah, small town life. [/Short hijack]
Hey, read “Lake Wobegon Days” by Garrison Keillor sometime if you want some real perspective on small-town journalism.
The Lake Wobegon Herald Star is edited by Harold Starr, whose first principle of journalism is “I have to live here, too, you know.”
Mr. Starr has in his posession a manuscript, entitled “95 theses 95”, written by a former Lake Wobegon resident and sent to him, daring him to publish it. It includes such pearls as:
You have subjected me to endless, boring talk about weather, regularity, back problems, and whether something happened in 1938 or 1939…
You have taught me to worship a god who is exactly like you, who shares your thinking exactly, who is going to slap me one if I don’t straighten out fast…
You have provided me with poor male role models… men who clung to tiny grudges for decades and were devoted to vanity, horsefeathers, small potatoes—not travel but the rites of trunk-loading and map-reading and gas mileage; not faith but the Building Committee; not love but supper…
You taught me not to be “unusual” for fear of what the neighbors would say… We knew they’d talk, because we always talked about them…
I wasted years in diametrical opposition, thinking you were completely mistaken, and wound up living a life based more on yours than if I’d stayed home…
Mr. Starr has been tempted to run it at times, but has resisted the urge.
This is exactly the situation where I live. You have to check the funeral home’s website or call their automated obituary line if you don’t listen to the local radio station or you will miss the funeral!
About the small papers: I love 'em. I read them wherever I go. I also collect funny bloopers. One of my favorites is when someone gave a Super Bowel Party instead of a Super Bowl Party. That must have been fun!