Whatever Happened to Newspapers?
May 31, 2024 by DoctorVernon Coleman
In most cowboy movies which are set in a wild frontier town there are half a dozen essential buildings. There's a saloon, bank and hotel; a sheriff's office (together with its inbuilt jail), a hardware store and a newspaper office.
The newspaper is usually run by a grizzled, slightly grumpy old man who publishes, edits and writes the paper virtually singlehandedly. He may have a trusty assistant who lays out the type and gets shot early on in the film.
Apart from being the father/grandfather or uncle of the beautiful girl who provides the good guy with his romantic interest, the newspaperman is there as a standard bearer for truth, goodness and everything that is noble. He it is who fights the local bad guy – the greedy landowner, the psychopathic bad guy. At some point, around a third of the way into the movie, the newspaperman usually dies. But his fight for justice lives on.
It may be naive of me, but when I first started writing for newspapers the grizzled old newspaper editor and proprietor in that western town was my hero.
He courageously brought out his paper denouncing the bad guy regardless of the risks. He cared passionately for the truth and his mission in life was to share the truth (and his opinions) with the reading public.
Nothing – no threats, no bribes and no guns – could silence him. He exposed crooked politicians and bullying landowners with the same even handedness. He was concerned only with two things: truth and justice.
When I was young I loved that newspaperman. He was, I thought, what journalism was all about: courage, integrity and a firm belief in justice and the freedom of the press. Newspapers used to be about justice, freedom and truth. But those days are gone forever.
NOTE
For details of how Vernon Coleman was banned and demonized for the modern crime of telling the truth please read: `Truth Teller: The Price’, which is available from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com
I entered the newspaper world briefly as a photojournalist intern at several papers in the early 2000s. It was clear then that things were not going well and morale was in decline. The hedge funds came for them, and just like what happened to Red Lobster they bought them out, gutted them and profited over the property. Advertising decline and Craig's List also happened.
Even our local newspaper is a communist propaganda rag