Newspaper thefts prove continued might of the pen
A journalism professor I had shared with us students his story of working for a small-town newspaper that, on the back page of one of its issues, was running a prominent advertisement for a shirt sale by a retail clothier in the community.
All was fine until very early the morning of publication, when it was discovered that the party who’d composed the ad during the issue’s production had left a key letter out of the word “shirt” in the “SHIRT SALE!” headline running in big letters with the ad. You can probably guess which letter was omitted.
So said the professor, we should have seen the newspaper’s officials — including him, if my memory serves me correctly — running around town, trying to retrieve copies of the newspaper from their vending boxes before hapless residents went to buy a paper and viewed the offending ad headline.
That was, in terms of newspaper history and technology, eons ago. But I say to anyone who thinks newspapers in general, print newspapers in particular, don’t matter anymore … think again.
According to recent reports, the Ouray County Plaindealer, a Colorado newspaper, suffered the theft of more than a couple hundred copies of its Jan. 18 newspapers in its distribution areas.
“The newspaper said someone deposited money into each newspaper box to open them before taking off with all the papers inside,” according to an online Fox News story, dated Jan. 20.
The story goes on to quote a newsletter in which the Plaindealer addressed the theft: “All of our newspaper racks in Ouray and all but one rack in Ridgway were hit by a thief who stole all the newspapers. From what we know so far, it seems this person put in four quarters and took all the papers at these racks.” (I always wondered about that “honor system” of inserting the cost of one paper and opening a paper box that gives access to every copy in that
box. Er, how many folks have filched extra papers?)
Added the writer of the newsletter blurb: “It’s pretty clear that someone didn’t want the community to read the news this week. I’ll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions on which story they didn’t want you to read.”
The first story I read about the theft, a Jan. 21 CNN piece, simply mentioned that the paper had carried a story concerning “a reported sexual assault at the local police chief’s house” dating to last May. The Fox news story elaborated: The stolen Plain-dealer issue featured the case of a 17-year-old girl who had allegedly been raped by three other teens at a party at the home of the chief, who hasn’t been accused of anything. (The chief’s stepson is one of the three suspects, who are out on bail.)
First, not to take anything away from the seriousness of that case. Such an occurrence is too horrible to think about, no matter whose home it happens in. If it happened, may justice prevail.
The weird thing is that the newspaper thief — who according to CNN “confessed to taking the papers and returned them all in garbage bags to the newspaper’s office” — doesn’t appear to have skin in the game: “The suspect is ‘not a member or relative of local law enforcement and not associated with the defendants in the recent reported sexual assault,’ according to the Ouray County sheriff’s office.”
This newspaperwoman of more than four decades, who has witnessed the much-ballyhooed decline in newspapers, is encouraged at even the possibility that the guy thought print newspapers of such importance that by merely stealing them, he thought he could keep the community in the dark. In this day of instant, 24-hour TV news, news websites, social media and such.
That print newspapers still mean something to some people is evident in the conversations I have with readers when out and about. As all you iPad clutchers know by now, only the Sunday section of this newspaper is mass-distributed in print. Quite a few readers have told me that they miss the “paper” paper … the sound of it hitting their porches in the morning, the feel of it between their fingers. (Now I do hate to think there might be someone among our oldschool readers who’d resort to running around stealing papers from all the boxes when we publish something they don’t like.)
The Plaindealer paper thief’s motivation for wishing to suppress the voice of that newspaper was not revealed at the time of this writing. Having no connection to the persons in that assault case, he might have just been drunkenly acting on a dare or carrying out an elaborate “hold my beer and watch this” stunt.
But to me it looks like even in this era — where we each appear to be on the verge of having our own personal, human-looking android, let alone being able to simply click on something to get the news — the pen (and the print shop) is still mightier than the sword. And don’t you “newspapers are dead” believers forget it.
The Fox story goes on to share the parting quote in the Plaindealer’s newsletter: “We’re not going to stop doing our job, which is to shine light on important issues in our community and keep you informed. This person is not going to shut down the freedom of the press by stealing a few hundred newspapers. Our community won’t stand for it, and we won’t, either.
“If you meant to intimidate us, you just strengthened our resolve.”
A resolve all good newspapers bear. A resolve to tell the important stuff … and, if need be, correct any inadvertently profane misprints.