Sorry this old joke only works right when read out loud. Unless, of course you prefer the answer to be a skunk with a diaper rash. I was actually going for the more traditional answer, a newspaper.

I wanted to write about newspapers because this past week two major local daily newspapers and one local weekly published their final print editions. Here in New Jersey, the Star-Ledger and the Hunterdon County Democrat published their final print edition and just across the river the Easton Express Times published their final print version.

Across this country, newspapers have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Video may or may not have killed the radio star, but I think it’s safe to say that internet killed the newspaper. These days people consume their news on their phone or their computer screens, and all too often that means consuming news via questionable links on social media sites. Then there are the screaming, sensationalized stories of the cable news networks. We are drowning in misinformation, and it’s not healthy.

Most newspapers are committed to reporting facts in an unbiased matter, the same cannot be said for random websites or cable news stations.

Some years ago, when I lived in the Poconos, I worked for a newspaper publisher. At that time Journal Newspapers published a couple of different local weekly papers in addition to a couple of small monthly papers, the newsletters of various private communities (the Poconos has a lot of those) and a publication that I edited called The News of the Poconos, which despite its name was not a true newspaper but a publication aimed at tourists.

Here’s a picture of me at Claws ‘N’ Paws Wild Animal Park taken when I was working on a story for the News of the Poconos:

When I wasn’t busy working on the tourism stuff, though, I did write actual news stories for one of the weekly papers The Journal of the Pocono Plateau. I spent many hours at School Board and Board of Supervisors (akin to a Town Council) meetings, a role I would reprise some years later when I wrote local government stories for The Hunterdon County Democrat. I’m going to be honest, most local government meetings are boring. This is a good thing. There’s a reason “May you live in interesting times” is a curse. (And alas, the times we are living in right now are far, far too interesting.) One of the things that’s nice about local newspapers is that you can stay informed about what’s going on in your town and your school district by reading a summary in the paper instead of having to sit through a boring two hour meeting.

I’m not the only member of my family to have had a newspaper career. While she was in college my sister had an early morning paper route delivering the Star-Ledger. On more than one occasion I have (I can’t quite say fond) memories of helping her out on a Sunday. Back in those days the Sunday Ledger was a pretty massive beast, and assembling it and delivering it to everyone’s mailbox/driveway was really a two person job. As someone who is prone to car sickness riding in the passenger seat of my sister’s stick shift Honda Civic as she drove the back roads of Califon, NJ were not especially pleasant. The worst was when she would suddenly realize she had missed a delivery and pop the car into reverse and zip backwards down the deserted early morning road. Fun times.

The era of college kids and others making money delivering the Star-Ledger are over, and while I suppose it’s better for the environment, I can’t help but think that these vanishing print newspapers are overall very bad for us. The internet and cable news report breathlessly on national stories, and to some extent global stories, but local news stories often get overshadowed by all the shouty national stuff, which is unfortunate because it’s the local stuff that’s probably much more likely to have a direct impact on your own day to day life.

If you still have any local papers left where you live, I encourage you to support them, and while it’s not the same as a print edition, digital subscriptions are relatively inexpensive and will still allow you to stay on top of what’s happening in your little corner of the world. The way things are going around here, digital subscriptions might be all we have left.

— Alissa

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Weekly Inspiration

What I’m Reading: The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald

What I’m Watching: Back in Time

What I’m Listening to: “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News

Find out more about my books at alissagrosso.com

Find out more about my art at alissacarin.com

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My apologies for the typos and such this post is almost certainly riddled with.