Herdt: A goodbye in honor of those who still cherish newspapers

It was a Christmas morning about 20 years ago, and a woman I did not know telephoned my home in Ventura. She was distraught.

Her newspaper carrier had missed her on his route that day. She had phoned the circulation office, but by that time it had closed. She found my number in the phone book.

I told her that because of the holiday there was nothing that could be done and suggested she leave a message at the office and her carrier the next day would deliver both the current edition and the one she had missed.

Immediately after hanging up, I regretted my response. I should have asked for her address, refolded my copy of the newspaper, driven to her home and dropped it on her doorstep.

My caller deserved such service, for she harbored a sentiment that far too many folks these days do not, to their detriment. She cherished her newspaper.

Since I was a boy, waiting on summer afternoons for a thud in the driveway that signaled the arrival of the previous evening's box scores, I have cherished newspapers. For the last 38 years, I have cherished this one in particular.

It was the summer of 1977 when, still living in Ohio, I accepted over the phone an offer of a sports department internship at the Star-Free Press at a pay rate of $120 per week.

I have held down many jobs at the newspaper since, but the one that has been most enduring and has most satisfied my soul has been to write this column, which has been published nearly every Wednesday for 31 years.

This will be the last.

For 12 years as editorial page editor and 19 more after moving to Sacramento to open the (Ventura County) Star's state news bureau, I have sought every week to tell a good story and make a worthwhile point. The goal has always been to provide insight, never to sermonize.

It doesn't take an insightful person, however, to observe that newspapers don't play the role they once did. Those day-old box scores I pored over as a kid I now get in real time on my MLB.com At Bat app. My smartphone displays the weather forecast without my asking. Many folks get all their news electronically.

Times change, progress marches forward. And something very valuable is in danger of being left behind. It is not newspapers per se, but rather the connectedness between individuals and their communities.

People who get their news online spend on average a pathetic one minute or less on news websites before moving on to Instagram or whatever. It feeds a shallowness of understanding, which in turn fosters a pervasive cynicism.

As the author Marilynne Robinson noted this month, ours has become a culture in which 'people tend to feel the worst thing you can say is the truest thing you can say.'

Perhaps part of the reason is that, human nature being what it is, in just a minute or so of observation only those worst things attract clicks, yielding a pinched and ignorant perception of truth.

Newspapers may not be the cure for cynicism and ignorance, but they are an antidote.

Spend 20 minutes each day with a newspaper — not just one, but 20 — and I guarantee you will see things you would otherwise miss. A story about science or medicine or the arts or a neighbor who has done a remarkable thing. A headline that calls you to a story on a subject about which you didn't know you were interested.

Someone, or rather a group of someones, has spent a full day culling through news reports to provide an organized menu of information they believe will inform, enlighten or entertain you. It's a service only editors provide.

This may be as close to a sermon as I've come in 31 years, but it is possibly my last chance. I have taken a new job that makes it ethically impossible to continue (information sources with ethical standards are another thing that's disappearing, but that's another story). Perhaps after a year or so, if my editors will have me, I will write again from time to time.

So I leave you with this advice: Keep reading your newspaper and encourage others to do so. Actually reading, rather than glancing at, an online edition is fine, but my bias remains for a printed version over breakfast, even on Christmas Day.

Cherish your newspaper. You, and your community, will be better for it.

Timm Herdt is a columnist for the Ventura County Star.