The Newspaper Is Your Friend: Don't Kill It!

OK, so some information up-front: I'm an old-school newspaperman, from way back. When I was in 6th grade, I decided that I wanted to be a newspaperman. I grew up watching movies in which the newspaper saved the day. I went all through postsecondary school training to be a newspaperman. I graduated from college with a degree in journalism. I worked at a handful of newspapers. I say worked because I no longer work at a newspaper. Part of me wishes that I still did, but I don't. I still read the newspaper every day, though, without fail. So there you go. ...

Now, I'm here to argue about the newspaper's role as community service. See, the newspaper provides information and commentary and announcements and results, from your local community and from around the world. The newspaper informs, by giving people information that they want (or, perhaps, don't want). The newspaper gives results, by publishing sports scores and election returns. The newspaper

gives opinions (which should be clearly marked as such!), about the issues of the day. The newspaper lets people know what's happening in the world around them, from the mundane book club or city council meeting to the earth-shattering G20 meeting or literally earth-shattering earthquake or volcanic eruption in distant lands.

What the newspaper can also do is reunite a man and his bike.

This story can be told in a pair of photos, both featuring a bicycle. In the first photo, a diver who donated his time to rummage about the bottom of the Wellington (N.Z.) harbor can be seen holding up things he found on the ocean floor, including a hockey stick and a bicycle. He found all manner of other things as well, like golf balls and non-winning lottery tickets and other bits of the detritus of daily life. But he found this bicycle.

So the Wellington newspaper, the Dominion Post, runs this photo, with a story attached, telling how this good citizen gave his time to get the trash off the bottom of the harbor. It's a nice photo, really. The guy is smiling as he's showing what he's found. He's relieved that he's been able to get some of that trash out of the water and on its way to where it should be – in a landfill. It's also a feel-good story, because the reader identifies with the diver because he or she (the reader) doesn't want the harbor water to be clogged with anything like hockey sticks or bicycles.

So it's a nice photo and a nice story and it makes the reader feel nice. How nice.

But here's the real value: As it turns out, the bicycle that the diver found at the bottom of the harbor was stolen. That same bicycle that the diver is holding up for the Dominion Post photographer to shoot in order to illustrate the harbor floor-dredging story is a bicycle that was stolen while locked up along the waterfront. The owner of the bicycle, who counted on those two wheels as his only mobile form of transportation, had reported the bicycle stolen a few weeks ago and, after enough days of no news, had probably given up on getting his stolen property back.

But the bicycle owner saw the photo in the newspaper, recognized the bicycle as his own, was able to prove it was his, and now has his bicycle back. (See the second photo.)

The newspaper did this. The newspaper reunited bicycle with owner. The newspaper made it possible for a man to get back something that had been stolen from him. This wasn't a Picasso or some other thing that had been stolen and also had a really high market value; but that bicycle had a really high value to its owner, and he now has it back – thanks to the newspaper's doing its job as community service.

In this digital day and age, the newspaper comes in many forms, including electronic. (You could argue that the paper in newspaper implies a tactile thing, and you'd be correct; however, for the purposes of this discussion, we'll extend the definition of newspaper to include the online presence of a newspaper.) The bicycle owner might never have gotten his bicycle back. In fact, he might never have seen the photo in the newspaper. But he did see the photo because he did look at the newspaper, on the day the photo was in the newspaper. The odds against that coincidental series of events are staggering, but the odds turned out in the bicycle owner's favor all the same.

This is the power of the newspaper – providing all manner of information, along with the promise of imparting knowledge, awareness, and community service.

Read your newspaper, early and often. You never know what you're going to find.