Newspapers stand in gap

A reporter recently fielded the sort of question that flows freely to editors: Why all the bad news? Cited as evidence was a front page featuring fare typical of late: reports on the Augusta County reassessment, local officials awaiting word on how the federal stimulus package might provide money to cover budget gaps and car crashes, among other things. So desperate was the reader for uplifting news that he suggested, presumably in jest, that reporters get creative, contriving what major events recently have refused to provide in reality. In other words, make it up.

This prompts some thought on the role of newspapers in days uniquely difficult. If such contemplation is substantive, it will invariably lead back to the founding fathers, those remarkable figures who molded a country and a system separate from all others in history, and a facet of their vision that, so long as its pulse beats, keeps alive this place as now we know it.

So vital was preserving America as a society in which government answers to the people rather than the reverse that the fathers instituted a vital protection in the First Amendment. The text is about more than freedom of the press, it is about tasking the press with a duty as sacred as any belonging to the elected officials who roam power’s halls.

“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble,” the text reads. Why? The text answers: “[T]o petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Of course, petitioning for redress is associated with assembly, but this right also gets at the spirit of the amendment. It forms the heart of the press’ call to play the essential role of watchdog. We suggest that this call applies most pointedly to newspapers, and that newspapers, specifically, are best able to fulfill it.

Who, if newspapers like this one do not, will plunge into the seas of data composing Augusta County’s reassessment, finding and presenting the stories of the people behind the names and the numbers. The answer is no one will. This similarly applies to larger issues spanning history, from the buildup to revolution to slavery and civil rights to Watergate.

Exploring these events and others are endeavors that take energy, commitment and sheer hard work, and that labor needs a platform that only newspapers provide. Large, bold headlines and photographs shouting to readers from newsstands and vending boxes cannot be ignored with a simple shift of the mouse or a flip of the channel. Newspapers demand to be heard, and so too the people whose stories newspapers tell.

That is essential to making America work as a society driven by people in towns from here to San Jose, rather than solely by powerbrokers in Washington, as a place where people carve out lives for themselves as they see fit, empowered by individual liberty and inspired by opportunity to harness the best of their powers of creativity and ingenuity. Newspapers serve as a focal point for preserving that spirit by shining lights in dark corners, where corruption and excess lurk and threaten to fray the fabric that binds communities together.

Invariably, the result of these efforts as well as events of the moment is that there will be days when the headlines all read like portents. These are among the hazards of the hour.

The good news is this: Our readers continue to be fervently engaged in following the events of their communities through the pages of this newspaper as well as the halls of government, in coffee shops and over the hedges. Among the things that make the central Shenandoah Valley distinct from so many other points on the map is that its people are true citizens of the communities in which they live and work, rather than just faceless commuters shuttling back and forth from suburbia to the city. This is a place in which the people have a stake in their communities and know it.

Such a spirit is liberty’s lifeblood, and so The News Virginian’s. Recognizing this and the higher calling of the country’s founding fathers inspires us to press on, confident in our mission and its vitality to a way of life here and in America’s great beyond. From that duty we will not and dare not shrink.