Oct. 2-8 is National Newspaper Week

Published 8:00 am Saturday, October 1, 2016

Next week, Oct. 2-8, marks the 76th anniversary of National Newspaper Week. The annual observance celebrates and brings focus to the impact of newspapers on communities.

Since their inception, newspapers have been a voice and a watchdog for communities, one of the primary vehicles through which the stories of people, places and communities are told. Newspaper have been at the forefront of providing information on historic moments both in our nation and the local community. As our state’s oldest continuously running newspaper, it’s a commitment and responsibility that we don’t take lightly.

National Newspaper Week aims to remind us of the value — and the power — of print and the press. Reading your local newspaper is a way to know your local community, to provoke thought, generate new ideas and bring forth change and understanding through the power of print.

Even today, as access to the very public information that remains a vital and necessary piece in helping fulfill newspapers’ watchdog role for communities is under siege throughout the country, newspapers remain steadfast. All over the country, rules and regulations on access to public information are under scrutiny.

In some parts of the country, including right here in Georgia, open meetings laws that grant us access are under siege by legislative proposals aimed at thwarting our right to know.

Open meetings laws remain, however, foundational to what legal organs like us and other newspapers like ours strive to uphold every day.

Oftentimes we forget the value of such resources until they are gone.

Birth announcements, first touchdowns scored, weddings and obituaries, all clipped and saved in scrapbooks and on refrigerator doors, tell a story of us that would not be possible without community newspapers.

As valuable as they are to all of us, other media sources simply do not provide the information on issues impacting the local level as newspapers can and often do.

At their best, community newspapers like our own are the constant source of local information. In good times and in bad, they focus on community. They are at the very core of the ties that bind us, and they chronicle it all each day.

Newspapers and what we stand for still matter and fighting the good fight does too. That’s the power of print and the press.