Print Matters

by Michele Boy | December 7, 2023

Sitting in the Herndon gym on Tuesday watching Syracuse take on Cheyenne Wells, I had a question about their newspaper. When I googled it, it said the newspaper shut down in 2021. I was sad. 
If you follow newspapers at all, more and more printing presses are being shut down. Less places for us to print. 
The website for Cheyenne Wells news said the Gazette (Colorado Springs) was their “sister” paper and to follow them. 
If you live in a small town you know that larger city papers can’t cover your rural news well.  In all honesty they aren’t covering their own areas well. They have been bought up by larger outlets which have a page or two of local news and the rest is canned or generic. Journalists have been let go. 
I stepped across the aisle to our competition and asked a few friendly folks about this. 
They responded that no that was not the case. They were putting their news it the hands of another small town paper, the Kiowa County Independent. That made me smile. 
A woman stopped in my office the other day and noticed the dictionary I have on a small table next to a vintage typewriter. As she thumbed through the 1960s publication, I realized something. Online news can be hacked, tampered with, adjusted to fit the narrative of today. Politically correct, erased, or canceled - it’s all possible. But print, mistakes and all the uncomfortable truths, lay there. Words have changed meanings over time. 
But print lays unchanged. This dictionary still defines uncomfortable words. It tells you what was going on at that time in history. 
Print matters. I will say it again. Print matters. 
To younger folks who haven’t been exposed to print, to newspapers, to large bulky textbooks, I feel like there is a disservice. 
Yes print is slower, not instantaneous, and can’t be corrected immediately if it is wrong. 
But a book or a newspaper that is read without pop-up ads can be digested better. 
I am not against an online presence or social media for many things. But there is a place for print, a wonderful place. I encourage you to close your internet browser and pick up a book or newspaper. I would also encourage you to support a small town local newspaper by buying a subscription. Yes, I would love it if you subscribed to ours. But I would love you to grab another too. Consider The Kiowa County Independent, Plainsman Herald, Greeley County Republican, the Lakin Independent, or the Wichita County Native Sun. Just a few off the top of my head. 
I wanted to end this column with a quote about newspapers. I saw endless negative pieces saying how dark and twisted news from newspapers are, having you believe the worst. I guess they never read small town news. 
Maybe we don’t cover it all but I would say with confidence we cover more good than bad. We highlight our youth, and we cover things that matter in small town rural America. 
This newspaper has been in print since 1885. That’s 138 years. Some years good some years sketchy. But it has continued on. So as we are coming to the end of another year, I want to thank all those owners and editors who kept it alive. And for every single subscriber and advertiser, you make a difference!