When Newspapers Were Newspapers

About 20 years ago, maybe a little less, when the Thanksgiving Day newspaper showed up in the paper box, it was as thick as two encyclopedias, at least. It was full of advertisements for Black Friday sales.

It also had real news in it.

Now the daily newspaper doesn't even print a paper on Thanksgiving Day. Or any other holiday, for that matter.

And there are no advertisements.

In those long-gone days, it was a delicious treat to sit down with that fat Thanksgiving Day paper and look through the ads. It was reminiscent of the old Sears catalog. How else did you know what was out there to buy if you couldn't look through ads to see?

Today, the ads kind of come to you through whatever website you visit, but that means there are hundreds of items out there that I might like that I will never see.

Not only have we lost the news in newspapers, but also the lack of advertisements means many of us have lost the way to find new toys or products that we might use.

The other thing we have lost with the decline of newspapers is the way I used to find work. There are no longer "help wanted" ads in the newspaper. When I needed a job, long ago, I would take the Sunday paper (which would be very fat, by the way, and full of all kinds of real news and interesting feature stories), and using a red pen, I'd circle any job I thought I might be interested in and/or qualified for.

Generally, the ads were blind box ads, so you had no idea what company you were applying to. I almost always found a job that way. My resume was decent, and I had legal experience from working for lawyers, so I could find secretarial work almost anywhere.

Those days are gone, too. To be honest, I wouldn't know how to find a job if I was physically capable of holding one. All I know to do now is go to Indeed and have a look around. Or go to individual businesses and check out their "jobs" section, if it is a large company.

Newspapers were part of the fabric that held this nation together. It was known as the Fourth Estate for a reason - it was supposed to act independently of the government, not as its puppet or mouthpiece. That's not to say there wasn't bias or slant to the articles - of course there was, even long ago - but generally speaking, most reporters that I have known were there to simply tell the truth of the story they were writing about, whether that was a county meeting or a heroic adventure some youth had while paddling down the James River. It's the editors, owners, and bean counters who have turned the media into an entertainment industry instead of the news as it once was.

I think the decline of the nation is echoed by the decline of the news media. Talking heads who argue with one another is not news. Someone spewing out his opinion of what is going on is not news. I used to write news. I had no agenda other than to report what went on at a meeting. Of course, I had to curry out what was most important - do I lead with the budget or the new construction of a fire station? - that sort of thing. But in my articles, at least, nearly everything that went on at the meeting was reported.

Now, it's not. I watch the meetings online and when I read about them, the most important item is singled out, and that's about all that is given. If the public speaks, the newspapers no longer print their names like they once did. Once you were in the public halls, and put yourself up there to speak, you were in the public domain and whatever was said was fair game for the newspapers. Try that now and the public will pounce on you like a hound after a fox, and that's the end of you.

I would love to see a good newspaper again. I'd like to see advertisements again. I'd like to sit down with a Sears catalog and turn the pages, licking the ink off of my fingers, just to see what all is out there.

We have lost so much with all of these gains in technology. There is no going back, I know. We must thrust our way forward and hope that whatever sword finds us, it's not the one with the powerful pointy end.