Sometimes I just need a kick in the pants …

Have you ever had one of those days, weeks, months?
You know … you take one step forward and get kicked back two. No matter how you try to please people, they can’t find anything but the negative to harp about.
Just when we make major progress on our postal problems, Florida legislators pull a U-turn and jeopardize how and where public notices can be posted. And I have no doubt some of our friends in Austin are licking their chops and making calls to Florida as we speak.
Some days I think I’ll just throw my hands up in the air and head to the ranch in Corsicana and just sit on the front porch with a cup of coffee and count the cars passing by.
That’s what my lovely bride Suzanne always threatened to do when she got fed up with the whole newspaper business.
The other day I was at that very fork in the road when our good friend Laurie Brown sent me this email:

Jim,
Surely every newspaper editor has a pile like this one—of all the newspapers they have saved to read when they catch a break and don’t have a deadline breathing down their neck.
I dived into mine today, just because I was sick of what I had been doing and needed a little convo with my friends.
There was that column in the February Messenger, just waiting to throw me back into the job, full-throttle, with Suzanne’s fine example to fuel me.
First, I had to cry a bit … I’m sure you shed some tears writing it, too. Then, I saw Suzanne staring up at me from that patio chair, wearing her press hat, saying, “Go get ‘em.”
A kick in the pants, that one. Grabbing my pen, marching into battle. Thank you both for what you have done for the Free Press.
She’s beaming over you, I’m sure.
Laurie

The email was just what I needed. It kicked me in the pants and got me to thinking about how even when Suzanne was in the dumps, she always found that beam of sunshine peeking through the storm clouds of discontent.
Laurie was right – Suzanne keeps saying to us all … “Go get ‘em.”
As you read this column, I will most likely be at or just returning from the North & East Texas Press Association/West Texas Press Association annual convention, thanks to our good friends Phil and Lesa Major who kicked me in the pants and loaded me up in their vehicle and drove me to Hamilton.
Don’t get me wrong – I love going to press conventions. This year, however, there will be someone very important missing and my heart just wasn’t in it.
So like Laurie, I dug down in my pile of newspapers and pulled out some inspiration – one of Suzanne’s columns from 2021 entitled  “When my name is called.”
It’s a little long, but it is food for thought. Not just for me, but for us all in this crazy business. So grab a tissue, a cup of coffee and join me for:

… When my name is called
Journalism gets a bad rap. Especially print. There have been, and are, times when even your hometown newspaper folks take a few hard raps on their ink-stained fingers. Sometimes a justified lick, sometimes just an angry one.
My lifelong journalist hubby and I just got back from a joint convention of the North & East Texas Press and West Texas Press associations. Jim was one of the session speakers. His topic was “Journalism that Matters.” The discussion included stories from community journalists about how the small-town, and a few larger newspapers, had worked to save museums, libraries, community food ministries, support local school district needs and shine light in often, artificially and strictly controlled dark corners of city, county and state government.
I know many of you have a righteously critical opinion where the 24-hour news cycle is concerned and especially about “talking heads” who use controversy to spark ratings and sell advertising, or maybe just to make a name for themselves. I get it. I really do. But most of what you see on the 
24-hour news programs is NOT news. It is commentary. That means opinion. Which is fine if it is clearly understood to be opinion. That is where you come in. YOU, the viewer and reader, need to understand the difference and know when you are being manipulated for profit or politics or ego. That requires discernment and thoughtful consumption of news labeled sources. But journalism at the local level is so much more.
One of Jim’s responsibilities at the convention was to give a memorial report on the people in our regions who we lost to death this past year. As my sweet husband’s voice read the long list of names, and occasionally broke over a particularly dear friend, I thought about the work these people gave their lives to. The high school sports they had covered, the unpopular but needed changes they had helped spark in their communities. Their lifelong dedication to their hometowns.
And I thought about the void their deaths would leave. In many of our communities small newspapers and even larger ones are being closed or gobbled up by corporations which then eliminate offices, local reporting and close interaction with the community.
Most of our small town papers cover city council, school board and county government where your taxes are at work or wasted. Some of us pay to broadcast city council meetings at our own expense with no underwriting advertising just because we want to make sure taxpayers are informed. We pay videographers, photographers and writers to cover events, school sports and more. More often than not, it is the aging owners of these small community papers doing the bulk of the work themselves. And trust me, it isn’t for the money or the glory. It is a calling.
Despite what you may have been led to believe, a free press is absolutely necessary for a healthy democracy. The press is one of the first things that autocrats from the left and the right attack and discredit so that their message is the only one heard. Have you considered the importance of hearing and reading perspectives and opinions different from your own? Democracies survive and thrive when different sides of the political aisle have to work together to compromise.
And if you are holding the Constitution, as we do in our ink-stained hands, as your political bible, I would like to point out that journalism is the ONLY privately owned business specifically protected by the Founding Fathers. Men who hotly debated political perspectives and came from different sides of early political American aisles. You can find what are considered Americans’ most sacred rights protected in the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to assemble and petition the government.
If you would like to help continue the life of community journalism and protect rights and taxpayer interests, there are a few things you can do. First is to subscribe and read your hometown newspaper. Second, give gift subscriptions and introduce new readers, family members and neighbors to the historical oracle of your hometown. If you need a reason, try because if these doors close your stories don’t cease to be important, they cease to be told. And the light? Well, it gets a lot dimmer in the corners, and that may matter a very great deal.
Some day my name and Jim’s will be read from that memorial list as well. When that time comes I pray that what we have left behind for you is a legacy that has made a difference. But I also pray that our newspapers continue to cover and tell the stories that readers NEED to know and not just what they want to know. There is a difference, and that difference is what will makes this little corner of the world a better place.