Newspapers are valuable

It’s an interesting time to be in the newspaper industry. Times, they are a-changing. It seems there is a new way to share information popping up every day. And gloomy people have predicted the demise of printed newspapers for quite some time. But we’re not going anywhere.

The torrent of “information” being shared online on a daily basis is immense. And the amount of content which has true value, is significantly overwhelmed by less than trustworthy material.

It is an exhausting job trying to sort through it all trying to find what is accurate and has been corroborated versus what was posted as a joke by some dude in his mom’s basement.

Most folks wouldn’t blindly drink from a stream, for fear of getting ill. They pay for a service to filter the water and ensure it is free of contaminants.

A large part of our job is filtering through the noise. We do our very best to report information accurately. If you question something found on our pages, we will be able to show you why we printed it.

Uncle Bob may be the greatest guy in the world, but maybe he hit the share button on a “news” story without taking the time to fully investigate whether or not it was true. Maybe it had a catchy headline, maybe it lined up with his personal beliefs. Maybe the moral of the story was a good one and he doesn’t care that what is being reported as truth, is in fact not.

One of the main tenets of journalism is being fair and unbiased. It is one which I personally take very seriously. We do not take everything we hear and run with it. We’re going to ask the questions which need to be asked and do the research which needs to be done.

But we are human and do make mistakes. However, unlike the social networks, we will hold ourselves accountable. When a mistake is found, we will make it right. We run our corrections and clarifications in a standout box on our records page as soon as possible.

Another very important role of the printed newspaper is as the historical record.

Recently a time capsule was recovered from the old Carnegie building and opened. Inside were copies from each of the three (THREE!) newspapers, which existed in Nevada 100 years ago. With reasonable care, a printed paper will last a very long time. When I was tearing down a house recently I found one from the 1950s tucked in one of the walls. How much of your social media feed will be readable in 100 years?

We are your local newspaper. In our pages, you will find stories you will not find anywhere else. We’re not going anywhere, but this is not a job we can do alone. Connect with us and let us know what’s important to you. If there are events in your life and community you’d like to share, drop by for a visit. If we’re missing something, tell us.

The most important thing you can do to support us is to read and subscribe to the newspaper and respond to local advertising. You don’t expect to get free water from the city — our work has value too. We’re working every day to bring you more and better content. We will continue to experiment with digital technologies, but our core product is the newspaper. As a subscriber or advertiser, you enable us to continue producing the best, most in-depth stories in our community. You also help to ensure there will be a newspaper in the future.

Can you imagine a world with no newspaper?