Walking in the shoes of our ancestors

America’s National Newspaper Week came to a close Saturday – our what ifs could be tomorrow’s expected reality of yet another historical industry.

But… what if we would be part of a coalition that would fight the expectations and have something that our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents had in Bladen County?

We are actually doing something that generations have done when we hold a newspaper in our hand and “read all about it.”

Our hometown newspaper was pretty much nonexistent in the years prior to 2024. All national, nobody advertised, nobody cared, nobody called who needed a story in and if you did get one in, you had to do it yourself and hope someone would get it to the graphics and setup team.

The Bladen Journal (then called the Bladen Express) began in 1898 as the Clarkton Express in a booming industrial hub that centered around the railroad. In 1911 the name was changed to The Bladen Journal and in 1927 the publication relocated to Elizabethtown.

The hometown newspaper. It’s a piece of history. The first newspaper, Acta Diurna’, was printed somewhere around 59 B.C. in Rome. The first published weekly newspaper, Relation, was published in Antwerp in 1605.

We are in an era that has seen many businesses fall by the wayside. Technology and a paradigm shift of how and when we get information has forever changed society. Labor saving devices that we needed 25 years ago are not only obsolete, but a new generation must go to Wikipedia to find out what the “antique” was and how it worked.

We rescue things that are near and dear to our hearts and put money into preservation or renovation. Some things have been able to grow with the new technology and that adaptation has saved their life and the life of their employees.

The employees. They are the people who support their families with the operation of companies. Some are still paying off student loans, some have multiple mouths to feed and some are not quite to retirement age.

The hometown newspaper is in jeopardy. Many cities that have had daily papers are cutting back to 5 and some only three days a week. Others are cutting down to become a weekly.

Circulation alone, contrary to popular myth is not what keeps a newspaper afloat, although you will not find many things you can buy for just over a dollar in this day and age. When our publishers and owners judge our success by circulation, it becomes a stress-point for journalists who are already working overtime to try to get stories in each week with coverage, interviews, writing, editing and publishing.

If you want a perspective, write a biography and pay to have it edited and published.

Businesses of a community and the advertising are crucial. As the advertisers remain faithful to the community newspaper that paper can survive and continue to thrive in the face of extinction.

The local newspaper is something we all grew up with. From stories where we looked for our names in the paper as kids to having our own kids and grandkids and seeing their names and perhaps their pictures.

And the Bladen Journal boasts more pictures and faces of people in our community than any other newspaper in our region for our size – not to mention the hundreds of picture dumps that we post on Facebook each week.

Unless CNN or the big papers want to spend the time and resources to cover our local events which can range from concerts to baseball games, plays and special functions, it’s up to the local media to cover and report things in the local community.

The newspaper has always been the glue holding communities together and bringing everyone to one central location. Sadly, many local newspapers are closing up shop and calling it a day. No more can the kids from college come home and catch up on what’s going on in the community. No more can the information on Mrs. Brown passing away get to the many people who loved her.

When you invest in the local paper, you invest in your community. You invest in a tradition that has been precious for over a hundred years. You preserve the past when others are just letting it die.

And when the economy or criticism become factors and the paper shuts down, it will be another case of taking for granted something while we had it, and regretting letting it die when we had a chance to save it.

As a local business, you not only make yourself visible with advertising, but you are standing up to an outside business idea that tells us that the local paper must die to make way for new age technology. There is a world that doesn’t care about your kid’s name in the paper or the score of a local basketball game or the death of a beloved teacher and icon in the community. Or the history of some of our citizens.

When we stand up for the printing of the honor roll or the prom pictures or the kindergarten kids that spent an afternoon in the library speaking to our public safety officials, we defy the cold and callous who say we don’t need to hear about those things.

We can help to euthanize the local paper or we can fight to keep it alive and well. We can secure its voice for a new generation while other communities are letting theirs die. The voice of the paper is the voice of the community.

We ought to be a community that has our kids searching the paper for their names and local happenings than having them go to Wikipedia to learn about what a paper used to be.

In cooperation with Bladen Community College, we have gone above and beyond to partner with our community by way of offering basic journalism instruction to our own college students. Through the English department and working alongside Dr. Naomi Hooks we are creating an avenue for our kids that may yield another employment opportunity for some of our own – somewhere down the road.

If this pilot program works out, we could set a precedence in community colleges throughout the county that will give a younger generation a rare chance to work with their local newspapers and step into historical shoes of those who have once worked in the newspaper business. It is a part of America’s history. It changed things. It was a go-to source for information, and still is in the local sectors.

These kids could also help to revitalize an industry that has been hard-hit with the loss of its workforce due to the economy. And all it takes – is to get excited about the local paper again. To invest not just because of the stories that you see coming out right now – like them or not… but for those stories that will be written and published 10 years from now.

We invest in preserving history for our children in museums and exhibits and reenactments. We cannot only preserve the newspaper history, but can also invest in maintaining it. There is still a need. Still a niche. Still a purpose. If I didn’t believe it and didn’t have the passion for my portion of investment, I wouldn’t be doing it at 69 years of age. My regret would be having had the chance to help save it – and turning my back on that all-important investment into my community.

We could witness the closing or we could witness the tenacity of our county.