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StumbleuponScott Elliott: Can new media fill void left by community newspapers?
Monday, October 06, 2008
On my first day as a journalist, I was led into an arena and locked into a mud pit with a bunch of fast moving farm animals, a couple of which almost ran me over.
For a college-fresh kid from the East Coast and lifelong urban dweller, the "calf scramble" at the Clark County Fair was a crash course in the small-town definition of "news" that readers counted on from their modest weekly newspaper.
That newspaper, the New Carlisle Sun, closed Sept. 10 after 12 decades of letting people in town know who died, who had run-ins with the law, what that darned city council was up to and, yes, which local kids won ribbons at the county fair.
Beyond the personal sense of loss (learning a newspaper you once worked for closed feels a little like watching a wrecking ball pulverize your childhood home), the demise of the New Carlisle Sun is a potentially ominous harbinger. As the news business skids and slides its way toward an Internet-based future, will the messengers of Main Streets past come along, too, or just completely fade away as relics of a more tactile past?
As more small towns see their news sources vanish, will the World Wide Web ultimately deliver those one-time broadsheet readers to the future where somebody will care to provide their news to them online?
I hope so, because small towns bubble with great stories about interesting people.
It was a kindly New Carlisle city councilwoman I had met earlier in the day who recognized me heading for the bleachers at the calf scramble and escorted me to a "privileged" post ankle-deep in mud in a show of small-town hospitality. She meant well.
Here's how a calf scramble works:
One side of the pit has a couple dozen high school boys wearing football helmets. On the other side are far fewer nervous calves that are big enough to knock you flat. At the signal, the boys dash after the calves, and anyone who harnesses a calf and drags it to the winners' circle takes the animal home.
The next year the boys bring them back to be judged, and those who cared for them the best get cash prizes.
Not that I knew any of that at the time, as I sloshed around taking shaky notes and shooting rotten pictures between frequent duck-and-cover maneuvers.
The fun was only getting started.
Later I ran a front page mug shot of Wilbur the potbellied pig, along with a sympathetic story of the house pet with a gentle soul who was expelled from his warm home and loving family when cranky neighbors got a councilman to push through a new ordinance against harboring farm animals within the city limits. Wilbur squealed all the way out the city hall door after the council voted to exile him.
But it wasn't just about livestock at the New Carlisle Sun.
A story I wrote got a city council member impeached five years before Bill Clinton made it fashionable. She also was acquitted, but they ran out of chairs in the council chambers for the crowd that showed up to watch.
The town boasted a crazy cast of characters — vindictive cranks who declared war over petty issues like curb maintenance and alley clearance; embattled city officials trying to keep the streetlights on while fending off personal attacks; back-room dealers looking out for themselves or their friends; and council meeting blowhards. Those are the sorts of personalities novels are based on.
But my favorite people in town didn't get most of the headlines. They were the regular folks, good people just living their lives, raising their families and dropping 50 cents each week to read about what was going on around town.
It's the folks who'd call me to complain if they hadn't gotten their papers by 6 p.m. (so I could drop one off on my way home) that I feel for now.
For 126 years, the New Carlisle Sun was there for all of them every Wednesday afternoon.
For the sake of small towns everywhere, I hope the next age of media doesn't forget about them.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News. Contact him at 225-2485 or by e-mail at selliott@Dayton
DailyNews.com.
