Category: communicating

Reviving the Local Paper: A Vision for Community Engagement

As small towns evolve, the decline of local newspapers marks a significant shift. Once a cherished source of community connection, the physical paper is losing ground to digital mediums. This transformation extends beyond media, impacting local businesses and historical preservation. However, a potential reformation may adapt the paper’s role, fostering community dialogue and contributing to town revitalization.

Losing the local newspaper: the end or something else?

I’ve lived in many different sized towns over the past sixty years or so. Some have been quaint. Some have not. Each one has a unique characteristic so different from another that makes it a small town. Yes, they have all shared some characteristic. Main street is called Main Street. Locations are often described with “that’s the place where”. Only those who live or have lived there would understand and find them easily. The locals just know.

This town today is slowly changing. The changes would perhaps be unnoticed by the residents. They just need to stop and look – not glance – at the landscape and environment around. The differences seem to be just the “natural” progression of things; the march of time, inevitable. But they are profound differences; once these changes have occurred, some things may never, never be noticed.

It all starts with the newspaper. The local paper, once seen as the prime connection to the people, places and events of the community has changed; remember the garage sale sections, the personal section that let you know who visited whom, guests visiting; birthdays, anniversaries, lost pets. The paper now has lost, for me, the local-ness. It seems more like a mash-up (from the contemporary vernacular) that is not local. Articles were cut out and put on the refrigerator door, or mailed, passed to friends; the article was a tangible part of many lives. In several scrapbooks or picture albums, I have kept an article; to remind me, to connect me. Before smart phones and social media kept us plugged in constantly, updating this or that, life was different, easier, slower. Now it is a screenshot of an image.

I can remember setting on the front porch watching the world and the day process in front of my eyes. I would read the paper; front page had the really important things; obituaries to let me see how many I knew; food inspections to know where to buy groceries and where to get a bite to eat; police blotter; letters to the editor; editorial written by a name I knew and about a subject here; classified ads; local sports scores, highlights. The local paper was local. Pictures of local people. Pictures of local places. The paper was a daily. I even knew who delivered it, and had a pretty good idea when it would be delivered. Setting on the front porch with a cup of coffee was how my days started. Neighbor up the street was up around the same time I was up, cup of coffee in hand. Some mornings he waved at me. Some mornings I would walk up to his place and we would have a cup of coffee, and solve all the problems of the world. If you have lived in a small town, you will understand. ; not respond and react to everything thrown in our way, every hour and every minute. We were updated once a day, with the paper; not with the status updates, the barrage of text messages.

As the paper slowly starts loosing subscribers to the digital always on, forever updating, raging flow of information and images, the joy of reading the physical paper is gone. Advertising dollars are in flux. The delivery arm is morphed from small routes (remember the paper boys, on bicycles, with the bags of papers precariously perched on handle bars) to larger routes with hundreds of newspapers to be delivered, to postal delivery where the news becomes history, we all know that same day delivery will typically not be the norm.

The local paper is transformed into an amalgamation of seemingly random pieces from newsfeeds that are problematic to connect to the LOCAL viewpoint. Is a piece from the other side of the state, or even more than 100 miles away something that I can see as relevant? Probably not. When columns penned by reporters you know and see around town are replaced by news outlets where you know no one, the local paper has become irrelevant. Now, just a piece of a collection at the local library archives.

When dry cleaners start out-sourcing their work to a cleaner one hundred miles away, and finding a drycleaner locally this town is changing right in front of our eyes and we haven’t even noticed.

When the old buildings are seen as inadequate for use today are demolished to give more green spaces, our connection to our collective past is replaced by the latest technologically and hippest confluence of consultants and capital improvement. The craftsmen and their precision, the social and cultural importance of the materials, the integration of the physical structure into this place are replaced by an aesthetically neutral or incongruous thing that will never last as long as what it replaced.

The old just doesn’t work; we are compelled in some way to make our mark on things, rather than study and learn or relearn how to live in the present.

The coming reformation?

A reformation is not a revolution. A reformation does more than simply acknowledge our past. It provides us something to reshape, not replace, buildings, structures, functions and parts of our neighborhood and our town. This reshaping creates something that is a community. It grows and looks forward.

So, the local paper may become a weekend edition and mid-week edition. Might even find the paper part of conversations again. Might even be part of the reformation of a local town. Perhaps.

Three simple things

Have you ever stopped to recall some of things you have heard over your lifetime? Think about all of the commencements you’ve attended; from junior-high to senior high, perhaps college, and others. What made that memorable to the point where you can recall the points of the speaker, even after years have passed?

Three points to ponder

The Honorable Loretta H Rush, Chief Justice of the State of Indiana, delivered a very memorable keynote at the IU Maurer School of Law Commencement today. Key points and takeaway: Shake it up, Show up, and Speak up. Shake it up – be bold, challenge the norm, be brave. Show up – sometimes, the greatest opportunity we are presented with is to simply show up, be present, be THERE. Speak up – never let an opportunity pass you by to speak up. So, shake it up – be the difference … show up, be intentional, be deliberate, be engaged … and speak up … for those with no voice, for those who need YOUR voice. Thanks to the Chief Justice, for her challenge to action! – David Peter, May 6, 2017.

Show up

I have and make it a conscious and intentional act to be present. It has become part of who I am, to show up at the things important to me. When I was Dean of the Library at Vincennes University, I was fortunate to have a group of wonderfully talented librarians whose deep understanding of the value of reading and how that was at the core of their profession. The library would sponsor a celebration of banned books yearly, bringing attention to the importance of full access to books without any sort of filter. Students would sign up to read passages at a performance. Faculty and several administrators would come and participate as well. Community members would attend and several would participate as well. To appreciate the significance of the event, consider that in some places here in this country, and overseas, such gatherings would be labelled as acts of disobedience. And, when the content that is being read is added, some might label it is inappropriate or worse! But here these individuals were, present at this event.

How can you show up?

  • Go to the events, the meetings, the presentations, the performances of those things you care about greatly. You don’t have to be showy or ostentatious, just be present.
  • If invited to attend, go there. Sometimes the invitation may have been made because your compassion is known, appreciated and acknowledged by someone.

Speak out

Speaking up is a skill or ability that can only be refined after time has given opportunity to speak, and speak and speak again. Practice is for me the most efficient way to become a better speaker. I will sometimes read memorable speeches from Lincoln, Rev. Dr. Martin L. King Jr., sermons of John Wesley, poetry from Amanda Gorman, Maya Angelou, following the words, the visual images formed into words, and the rhythm. Not seeking to be anyone but myself, I read to refine and focus my oratorical abilities.

How can you speak up?

  • Engage in a conversation, a dialogue if you will, with one person. Share ideas, concerns and questions.
  • The time may come, or may not, for a larger audience to hear your words. Speak with confidence, and speak with conviction.

Shake it up

Most of the people who know me in a range of settings, locations, and over periods of time would not say I am a protestor, not an agitator, not a disrupter; perhaps even more describe me as a non-violent sort of fellow. I just do not see myself as the one who would throw something, resort to violence; more than not, I am more of a non-violent protestor. Don’t get me wrong, I can write a letter advocating for something that lies at the core of who I am. If I shake things up, it is with the written word.

How to shake it up

  • I’m still working on this part myself. I’m just not quite sure how to be a more vocal and visible disruptor. It’s just not me.

Final things

Seven years later, here I am. These words continue to resonate with me. Three simple things. Nothing more and nothing less. In the midst of all the discord of the day, and yearning to find that balance needed, don’t three simple rules make all the sense?

Navigating Digital and Analog Communication in the Modern Age

Maintaining connections with people has become a challenge. Parkinson’s affects handwriting, making it difficult to write letters. Speech-to-text technology has improved communication. Technology has decreased postal correspondence, but digital and analog communication should coexist. Different occasions may call for different forms of communication. Integrating technology into friendships requires considering alternative means of contact.

Part 1

It seems, at least to me, that it is much more of a challenge to maintain and nurture connections with people. Not sure what’s going on, but here are a few thoughts.

The written word

As my handwriting continues to become a bit more illegible, I am not likely to write a full letter. Even with ruled pages, my script will not be on the line. Above, below, but never with anysort of predictability where it should be. So, it is not my most comfortable form of communicating. Tremors that are a part of Parkinson’s will often cause letters to be misshaped to the point of being unintelligible. And that’s even for me, the writer who cannot even read what he wrote. Just the way it is.

The advances in technology for speech-t0-text have been transformational for me. Learning how to add punctuation, “Period,” “Question mark,” “Comma,”Exclamation mark,” have made it easier to write something. This simple capability of technology has given me much more opportunity to communicate and connect without having to rely on pen and paper.

Old or new

I have observed over many, many years that as technology has become more ubiquitous, correspondence delivered by the post office has declined. Can a SMS be an adequate or equivalent form to a postcard? No. Can an email equate to a letter? Definitely not. Not wanting to categorize all technology as bad, let me propose that there must be some sort of balance between the digital communication and the analog communication. Consider that there are some instances, selected events, particular gatherings that are better served with digital, and some analog.

What determined that writing a thank you note, placed in an envelope, addressed and with the postal stamp was not necessary, even perhaps just a wrong thing? I can remember writing thank you notes for birthday gifts, holiday gifts and much more. To receive a thank you social media post, or sms text message isn’t a written one. Not to worry, I know that the mode that each one communicates in differs. And that’s alright with me. I am letting you understand more about my own disciplines.

For now

If you find yourself with a friend who have integrated technology rather than uses technology, ask “So, how can I get back with you if I have any questions?” Would a physical, mailing address work? A phone number (not the corded variety, more than likely a wireless or digital or mobile)?

The times are and have changed. The IoT is present.