The newspaper... a community talking to itself

Newspapers are America's original chat rooms.

Americans have used newspapers from the earliest days of the nation to talk to ourselves - newspapers are where we exchange information and opinions, hawk products and ideas, praise our heroes or attack our enemies and sift through the news of the day for what's vital or just interesting to us.

The nation's founders believed a free press needed to be among the basic freedoms protected by the First Amendment, and newspapers remain the way we get detailed information about news, opinions and products that affect us every day.

Newspapers document the workings of public officials, help roust scoundrels, hold the powerful accountable and - for individuals as well as the nation - both celebrate our lives and record our most tragic moments.

For most citizens, their newspaper - often termed the "first draft of history" - covers their most important moments: birth announcement, maybe a story about a youth sports or academic success, a graduation list, marriage announcement - sometimes followed by a divorce legal notice - and an obituary - the real stuff of our lives.

Community newspapers like ours give the details of what happened yesterday, the inner workings of what is happening today and the best information about what's likely to happen tomorrow - traffic alerts, home sales, local policy debates and what's "on sale."

Newspapers document events of all kinds, and in doing so provide us a measure of protection, from telling us about crime in our neighborhoods to monitoring the government's power of criminal prosecution.

Newspapers are where we as a people debate the issues and ideas that are important to us. From editorials expressing the opinion of the paper to "op-ed" pages carrying the opinions of columnists and writers to "letters to the editor," we hash out publicly how we feel about our government, our neighbors, our schools and a multitude of other subjects.

The town square may be too traffic-ridden to be heard today, but diverse voices still reach us each day in the "town square" that is the editorial pages of American newspapers. There, we converse, challenge and opine on topics as diverse as abortion and prescription drugs, baseball rules and stadium construction, women's suffrage and civil rights, immigration and taxes, religion and ethics, and fishing licenses.

Newspapers report and examine what local officials are doing - or not doing - with our tax dollars, and who lived and died yesterday. They expose scandal, celebrate the best in our society and, in an increasingly complex world, provide basic information and explanation.

Newspapers can - and perhaps should - enlighten, infuriate, encourage, inform, expose, excoriate and exult, sometimes all in a single issue. They uniquely provide the foundation for a free press and have an irreplaceable daily role in defining and protecting "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the United States.

America just wouldn't be "American" - we would not be a free people and democracy would not function - without newspapers.

As we prepare to mark National Newspaper Week (Oct. 5-11), we're proud of the role we play in our community and honored to continue our nation's tradition of a free press.