My Gramps and Microfilm

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I stole an hour the other day and went to the library to look at microfilm of our paper from 1962. I’m working on a long-term research and reporting project. Some of the nation’s large newspapers — New York Times, Wall Street Journal — have been digitized and can be searched online. But if you want to look at issues of the Longview newspaper from 1962, that means slowly scrolling through microfilm a page at a time.

These trays of microfilm tell the story of this community nearly five decades ago, the rough draft of our history. I often wonder in what manner historians will access our paper 50 years from now. I’m sure it will be in an electronic format, searchable just like the Times is now.

Some of you no doubt are smirking. Newspapers still around in 50 years? Hah! You folks are dinosaurs. The Ice Age is bearing down. Prepare to die.

Balderdash. We’re not going anywhere, folks. Our owners might change; there’s still a “for sale” sign metaphorically hung outside our building. Increasingly, more of you might get the paper online instead of on your porch. We probably won’t make as much money as we did in the good ol’ days before the Internet. Times are rough right now in our business. I have had to cut jobs and not fill vacancies. It’s not a lot of fun, but nobody forced me to take this job. We will survive — indeed flourish — once this economic storm passes.

Here’s why we’ll be around. If you care a whit about this place we call home, about how well or poorly its public officials are serving you, about our shortcomings and triumphs, how the girls’ soccer team fared last night, who got married, or who passed away, you have to read our paper or Web site. Nobody else provides you the wealth of information about our home that we do. No one comes even close.

Local news is our franchise. Increasingly, you are getting the out-of-town information in our paper elsewhere — online and television, mainly. But if you give a rip about what’s happening here, you can only get that information from us. We spend a bunch of money to gather that information and distribute it to you every day. We’re not going to stop doing that. It’s our bread and butter, why advertisers know that we’re the best game in town. We reach more people than any other medium. That’s not going to change.

Some large newspapers are in trouble, largely because of too much debt. Some might go under or convert to online only. But as my former boss, Jay Smith, points out, between 1937 and 1939 nearly 100 newspapers in America went out of business. Yet the industry survived, indeed boomed in the post-war years. Jay is part of an initiative called The Newspaper Project, which serves as a cheerleader for newspapers, urging them to snap out of it and fight back. Count me in the corps of folks fighting back against the doomsayers.

I refuse to imagine a world without newspapers. Since retirement isn’t an option, I intend to join my brethren in defending, promoting and sculpting what a newspaper looks like in these uncertain times. We lose a little piece of democracy every time a newspaper dies. Another rough draft of history is lost.

As I scrolled through the microfilm, a familiar face appeared, on the front page of the Dec. 20, 1962 issue of the Longview Daily News. The headline announced, “Scout Leader Given New Job.” It was my grandfather, Carl Borders, who had moved here from Springfield, Missouri five years earlier. He had been promoted to field director of the East Texas Area Council. It was a minor event, but on that day in 1962 it merited front-page treatment.

That’s what we do, every day. We take note of those who have been promoted or otherwise recognized, keep a (hopefully) sharp eye on those who control public pursestrings, and we try to be a force for progress. My favorite newspaper slogan comes from the Chicago Times, in 1861: “It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”

We’re far from perfect. We don’t raise enough hell, in my increasingly curmudgeonly view. We make too many dumb mistakes — spelling names wrong, etc. But here’s the deal. We’re out there every day, trying our best to bring you the news of the day, striving to be fair and thorough. And nobody else is even trying to do what we do.

We’re not going away. You can count on that.

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