The Day the News Had Died

We hadn’t driven to the levee and it was too early in the day for whiskey or rye.  On this day the good old boys, now old men, gathered at the diner like we do every Tuesday at noon.  Once each week for about ninety minutes, lots of humor lay like an afghan over more than a thousand years of accumulated living and wisdom present in that room.  

 

Someone mentioned that his newspaper hadn’t arrived in his driveway until after 7:30 that morning.  Another said his paper hadn’t been delivered at all on several recent days.  Yet another commented that it really didn’t qualify as news anyway.  The paper is printed in Des Moines, about a three hour drive from Kansas City, so a recap of the Thursday Royals game wouldn’t meet the Friday printing deadline.  With no Saturday paper, the recap would first appear in Sunday’s edition.  That drew a laugh because the team is in such a slump that the newspaper schedule was just protecting us from bad news.

 

Behind the banter about the newspaper I could hear Don McLean’s song, American Pie, running through my mind.  For McLean the day the music died probably refers to when Buddy Holly died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959.  McLean was 13.  I was 13 that year too.  His childhood job was the same as I, and many other young teenage boys, had in those days – he was a paperboy.  

 

For most of us a bundle or two of newspapers were dropped at our house by about 4:00 AM every morning. Our job was to break the bundles and fold the papers individually so they could be thrown without flying apart – we called it a flare which cost time and money.  I delivered a paper to every subscriber on my route by 5:00 AM every morning.  Some paperboys walked; I rode my bike.  It had a basket and saddle bags for the rolled up papers.  Every paperboy I knew soaked up the news.   We became addicted as if the ink seeped into the veins of our fingers as we folded scores of papers every day.  Delivering the paper, the source of trusted facts, felt like an duty fulfilled.

 

Don McLean was reportedly rolling papers on a February morning in 1959.  It would be a dozen years later that he wrote American Pie but his second stanza suggests his memory of that day’s news had not faded.  He wrote, “But February made me shiver / With every paper I’d deliver / Bad news on the doorstep / I couldn’t take one more step.”  He went on to characterize the deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper by writing, “I can’t remember if I cried / When I read about his widowed bride / But something touched me deep inside / The day the music died.”

 

We good old men told our stories today.  Each of us recounted a memory of running to the porch to retrieve the newspaper or waiting, sometimes patiently, for dad to finish with the sports section. We hoped for good news and dreaded that bad news had landed on our doorstep.  All our memories were different.  We went to different schools and churches and lived in different neighborhoods, cities or states.  The news, though, was the same for all of us.  The facts were the facts.  Journalism adhered to a code of ethics and principles of practice where pursuit of facts had to be verified by multiple sources. The reporting could be trusted to include as little bias as human reporters could muster.  Editors were diligent in getting the facts right and disciplining a reporter who let his opinions creep into a story.

 

So whether we read the Des Moines Register, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Kansas City Star, the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times, the news (the facts) would be the starting point for us to grapple with understanding our world.  The stories reminded us that humility is crucial to understanding.  The bias in most newspapers, if one existed, was to cover bad news more thoroughly than good news.  Since newspapers depended on local advertising, every paper included a distinctly local flavor by reporting state and local stories that would never be reported in any national media.  Without such reporting, local corruption as well as many local successes would remain unknown to most citizens.  The glue that binds a community together would dissolve leaving an ugly residue of isolation for everyone.

 

As our conversation ebbed, one of the good old guys declared that we simply don’t have a local newspaper in Kansas City anymore.  Another chimed in supporting that thought and others nodded.  One mentioned the departure of a very dedicated investigative reporter and columnist as more evidence of the dissipating flow of professional local journalism.  Shortly a subtle gloom settled over the waning banter as we prepared to leave and go our separate ways.   As we ambled out, we were buoyed by the unspoken knowledge that we would fill these same chairs one week ahead and new topics would bring the room alive with talk and laughter.

 

Don McLean thought he had seen, and lived through, the day that music died.  Since we adjourned today, I’ve come to believe that we good old guys got it right this time.  The kind of news that we knew during our growing up has died.  Maybe we will never pinpoint the specific date of death but we were sure it is gone.  The news that was the same for all of us, the local reporting that gave it’s greatest energy to checking, double checking, and triple checking facts has been left behind.  Many sources of “new news” have decided that editors are unnecessary. 

 

If I were thirteen years old today, I don’t know how I would know what to believe.  I’m not sure I would know where to look to find it.  If I was perceptive enough, I wouldn’t follow anyone whose source of news depends on demonstrably false tweets or other such social media.  How does a thirteen-year-old develop his or her perceptive ability?  Differing opinions make our democracy work but only if the differing opinions devolve from the same well researched and verified facts.  When I was thirteen, Buddy Holly wasn’t my favorite singer.  His death was a tragedy and a fact but music did not die that day.  Music survived.  News, particularly local news, may not.

 

If local journalism is dying, as some newspapers clearly are, I am close to certain that its death is a canary in the coal mine of democracy.  I’m left wishing my grandsons could be paperboys so they could absorb the news, hone their perception and learn to value humility.  I wish they could honor the news while throwing the same news on the doorsteps of every one of their friends and neighbors.  I want them to grasp solid facts and understand another person’s perspective before solidifying their opinions and passions. 

 

I fear that one day soon the eulogy for journalism and humility will be published in one tweet, one post on Instagram or perhaps be memorialized in a TikTok dance.  Some podcasts will mourn the passing and cable TV will ramp up its outrage rhetoric.  Far too many of us will not notice.  We’ll just continue consuming information that is tailored to affirm the biases we already hold.  

 

This former paperboy shivers when he remembers McLean’s writing, “I met a girl who sang the blues, / and I asked her for some happy news / But she just smiled and turned away.”  And then he added, “I went down to the sacred store / where I’d heard the music years before / But the man there said the music wouldn’t play. / And in the streets, the children screamed / The lovers cried and the poets dreamed / But not a word was spoken / The church bells all were broken.”

It sounds like he was describing the day the news had died.

                                                                                                                --td