This week marks a special time in my life. It was the week that I became a journalist, signing on to the late, great Bethlehem Globe Times in January of 1971.
The '70s were what might be called the golden age of journalism — Watergate, the Pentagon Papers — even the Globe Times reached the height of its subscription base at a circulation of 38,000. Those aren't New York Times numbers, but they're good numbers. It was a great time to be a journalist, even a small town journalist.
I can't begin to tell you how valuable my Globe Times training was for a later career in magazines as a sports writer. I was once booed by the entire audience at a Saucon Valley sports banquet; they thought I had slighted their wrestling team. I was dressed down publicly by the hard-boiled Bethlehem Catholic basketball coach because he had taken offense to something that had been written in the paper, not even by me. I criticized a long-time Liberty High football coach for being too conservative in his play-calling and I had to face the wrath of Liberty alumni. So later, when I was confronted by professional athletes over something I had written, did I find that intimidating? No way. That did not compare to being 21 years old and having to deal with the anger of communities that were intensely interested in sports.
And as far as being nervous when I interviewed famous athletes; didn't happen. I was sent out to talk to Willie Mays when I was 21 years old. Six years earlier, I had been trading to get his baseball card, and now I'm talking to him?
Now, those who remember the Globe Times would not necessarily agree with my positive characterization. The institution of the local newspaper — I don't care where it is — exists to be hated. Somewhere along the line, the local newspaper did something to get you angry; it left your kid off the honor roll, it misidentified your nephew in the middle school science fair photo. And we didn't get everything right. There's a reason why newspapers internally are called "the daily miracle." The constraints of time and human error resulted in some mistakes, and if an individual or a team or a political party could make hay by pointing out those mistakes, well, they did it. And loudly. Though not quite as loudly as today when there's an internet.
Here's what the Globe Times covered: the school board, the parking authority, the city council, what Bethlehem Steel was putting into Saucon Creek. The things that get forgotten. The things you don't think about. Local newspapers are like the uncle with the tired dad jokes that you try to avoid at family reunions; he's in your face, but you kind of miss him when he's gone. At least I hope you do.
And make no mistake about it, local newspapers are gone. The United States has lost nearly 3,000 newspapers since 2005. About 2.5 newspapers close per week. The Globe Times was a typical case — evening newspaper, small-to-mid size, covered a limited area. In the 1980s increasingly, people coming home from work began getting their news from television and not the evening paper, and that spelled doom in many cases to publications like the Globe Times. Then cable and 24-hour networks and the internet came along and newspapers began to fall like leaves in autumn.
Look, things change. Golden eras such as the one I experienced at the GT never last forever. But don't buy in to the idea that losing newspapers is good news (or losing community radio stations, for that matter). Some will tell you that. What the pundits want is to fill the spaces that were once taken up by local news stories with their own version of events, their own opinions, their own hot air. When people say they don't miss their local newspaper, I cringe, because here's the thing: they won't even know what they're missing until it's too late.
