Death of a Small-Town Paper

Our local newspaper covering Eureka, Pacific and somewhere else -- Gray Summit? -- came in the mailbox every two weeks bearing news of VFW suppers and church fish fries, all-you-can-eat breakfasts, Railroad Days and the bank's Customer Appreciation Day, flea markets, photos of prize-winning kids or teachers or the high-school play, and canned advice by our local Edward Jones agents. But it has died.

The paper -- The Current -- over the past year got thinner and thinner, a signal that advertisers had either deserted it or their ad people weren't aggressive enough, and a healthy newspaper must be 70 percent advertising. It used to have two plump sections, and occasionally a third special supplement. I had read every inch, sometimes laughing ("Local Photographer Almost Gets Picture Published"). I read about the new mayor at 8:30 a.m. on his first day in office firing every town employee including the city clerk who'd worked there 25 years. That's-a called drainin' the swamp. One time the mayoral candidates were Ms. Pigg and Mr. Titter. I learned that from the paper and will never forget it.

For a while the electronic Patch brought news and I called because I used to be a reporter, but their $50 per article was paltry. It takes all day and mileage to run around collecting information and interviews to put together just one news article, or learn enough about a person or business to write a feature story, and for local politics you must sit through the aldermen's meetings, etc. and can't leave, and covering politics in three towns means there are three such meetings to go to, not just one. Life is too short. The dying Current changed publishers three times, thinned and died. I will miss it. Along with bringing useful news (no disrespect intended) I used its obituary pages to peel potatoes on, at the same time reading those life summaries and how everybody was connected to everybody else and will be dearly missed.