Through seven different residences and about 40 years, I
kept a wooden trunk. Some might have
called it a footlocker.
We built it as a Boy Scout project for my
older brother to use at camp in Oceola, Missouri. When Gerry aged
out of scouting (long before it was known that scouting and I didn’t fit
together – a different story), the trunk passed to me. He had tired of it. To me it was a treasure chest – a safe place
for prized possessions. Sky blue on the
outside and lacquered on the inside, it had Gerry’s name stenciled on top and a
hasp on the lid where I could put a spin dial padlock. Secure.
Even Mom and Dad didn’t know the combination – at least I don’t think
they did. Early on, it held a few scraps
of memorabilia. But it was mostly
empty. I wanted it to hold something
important, something that would be meaningful when I was old – like twenty or
thirty or fifty?!
My first real job was a paper route. Every morning there were three bundles of
papers dropped at the corner up the street.
My job was to cut the twine and roll each paper tight
with a rubber band. I had a nubby canvas
bag with a wide shoulder strap that held all the rolled up papers. Mostly I would walk the route. Sometimes I rode my bike but the job was to
put every paper on the front stoop so the customer could get it without having
to come out in pajamas and bare feet.
While I rolled the papers, the stories lying before me were
begging to be read. This was the city,
the country, the world – the news! The smell of the paper. The smear of the ink. The size
of the type silently shouted about important stories. The headlines would draw me into the
page and make time disappear. Korea. Sputnik.
The president said we would send a man to the moon. A boy in a nearby neighborhood was
kidnapped. Alan Shepard. John Glenn.
The Kansas City A’s and Charley Finley.
The new fad of Rock ‘n Roll. The
British invasion. The Beatles. The
funnies. I became a reader of the
newspaper.
It wasn’t long until my trunk was filled with newspapers. From the outset, I knew a
story had to be important to get into the chest. But just clipping the column wouldn’t
work. A big part of getting the truth
from the facts is to understand the context.
So the entire paper had to be saved.
How else would you remember the weather that day or the lesser lead
below the fold? The really big stories
carried on for days as new facts were found and more of the story emerged.
In my trunk were the accounts and photos of assassinations, landing on the moon, of war, impeachment, and election. Each paper captured
new facts as they became known, piece by piece. Some pages in the back included opinions, conspiracy theories and emotions of the
moment. Breaking news was confined to the rarely printed Extra Edition.
Headlines were written to lead to the facts of the story. Newspaper editors taught reporters to write stories
with the most important information in the first paragraphs with lesser facts later
in the piece. There is a practical
reason. When editors and typesetters format the paper, some columns get cut back. Even with cuts the essential
and important facts are preserved.
Tuesday morning, twenty two hours after the cable channels
reported the latest political gaffs, my Kansas
City Star hit the driveway. While it
cannot compete with “breaking news”, the Star
still applies journalistic standards to the diminishing amount of news it prints. The newspaper has a system to help ensure
that the printed facts are indeed factual.
Professional journalists use multiple sources who can stick to the
facts. The editorial pages are
commentary. Opinions are printed there
but they are not news.
In too many cable news stories, suggestive words and
misleading teasers comprise the headline.
Clarity comes slowly, if at all.
Important facts are pushed to the end for dramatic effect. Too often, facts are intentionally blurred or
obscured. Where the newspaper lays out
the facts for you to form an opinion, some cable news starts with the opinion
and selects facts to support it.
In 1993, the Missouri River rose out of her banks over thirty feet above flood stage. Some water found its way to our basement. My trunk of newspapers filled with silt-laden water and washed away the contemporary history I had saved for more
than thirty years as my trunk fell to pieces.
Yes, I read on the internet (it doesn't feel or smell like a newspaper.) I watch television news and listen to the radio. But today it is much harder to find the facts
amid the silty water. Opinions based on
fact require hard work, critical reading and hyper-critical watching or
listening. I worry that we’re not up to
the task.
Until the last paper rolled up in a rubber band is thrown in
my driveway, I’ll read the newspaper when I can. I’ll depend on the facts being reported up
front and expect the opinions to be confined to an inside section.
--td