Every now and again — after a particularly rough day of reading and writing news stories that keep me awake at night — I think back to why I got into the newspaper business.
When I was a child, my classmate’s mother, Jane Larson, was a reporter for the Olean Times Herald. I always thought that was pretty neat. She would come to school and take a picture of us dressed up as pilgrims, just like the other parents were doing.
But Jane’s picture went in the newspaper.
I have been out of school for 27 years, and I still have that clipping.
When I was a teen, my sister was friends with Kimberly Maben, who at that time, worked at the Times Herald as well. She and I would have conversations about my interest in news.
I remembering growing up, my parents would always have that yellow newspaper box to bring us The Era. They would talk about stories in the paper, about streets being repaired, a new business opening up, someone being arrested, a trial being held.
That really made an impact on me. I learned to turn to the newspaper for answers. And I still do.
The Era has been part of my life since I was a child, and it feels almost surreal to be a part of that group that brings the news to those yellow paper boxes every day.
I look around the room where I work, at the vacuum tubes in the hallway and the red and green lights on the wall, and think about how things have changed over the years.
I’ve been reading back through some microfilm from The Era’s early days, and I find myself fascinated by the stories written.
Bringing a daily newspaper to life is a lot of work. In today’s computer age, in some ways it’s simpler, but the work involved is still more than one might anticipate.
For those of us in the newsroom, it’s a bit like writing term papers every day, for an audience of thousands. And we’d better hope we don’t make a typo.
There are days I have written 11 separate articles for the next day’s edition. That may not sound like a lot to people who aren’t familiar with the business, but two articles is considered a productive day.
Why do I do it? Because I believe in freedom of the press. I believe in newspapers. I believe in this region. And I believe in The Era.
I hear younger folks saying how they get their news on the internet, because reading things on blog sites is free. It is. And you get some information. Perhaps not a complete picture, as a press release is copied and pasted to a blog.
Give that same press release to a reporter, and get back a story giving not just the who, what, when and where, but also the why and the how.
It’s National Newspaper Week. It’s time for us to celebrate what The Era and other papers big and small all around the world do.
Layne Bruce, executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, wrote a column where he said, “We as a nation are beginning to give a collective shoulder shrug the fundamental freedoms in the Bill of Rights. And we’ve got to snap out of it. We’ve got to accept that not all news is happy or affirming.”
And in the immortal words of Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”
And for 142 years, The Era has been bringing the news readers need. And we hope we’ll be here for at least 142 years more.
(Schellhammer is The Era’s associate editor. She can be reached at marcie@bradfordera.com)
