I lost a dear old friend this week

By Bob Kravitz
The Indianapolis Star
Posted: February 28, 2009
http://www.indystar.com/

Today's column was going to be about Jeff Saturday, about how smart both sides were to ensure the return of one of the Indianapolis Colts' most important players.

Instead, I will write about that another time.

In the meantime, I will heed the words of an old columnist friend of mine -- he has since been downsized by his newspaper -- who told me, when in doubt, follow your gut, listen to your heart and write what's in your head.

Today, what's in my gut, my heart and my head is the death of another newspaper, a newspaper that happened to be my last home before I came to The Star in 2000: The Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

Please indulge me here, just as you've indulged me for the better part of 81/2 years. But four times Friday morning, I tried to start a Jeff Saturday column -- really, I did -- and four times, my mind drifted to what happened in Denver with the Rocky's last edition, and how print journalism goes the way of the steam engine.

First and foremost, I find myself grieving for the people there, good and decent people, great newspaper people who fought one of the country's last, true newspaper wars with energy, passion and pride. We were bonded by and invested with a shared desire to kick butt every day and blow the competing Denver Post out of the water.

Some days, we did. Some days, we didn't. What's sad is, our performance never really made the difference in who survived and who didn't. The corporate suits and bean counters made that call. The surviving Post is in almost as much financial distress as the now-defunct Rocky. It's not beyond comprehension that Denver, and soon some other cities, may be no-newspaper towns.

Mostly, I think about the people, many a lot like me, entering the business 20-30 years ago with the fervent belief that newspapers would not only last forever, but truly play an important and enduring role in our democracy. Our voices, whether in political discourse or sports or the home-and-garden section, would never be silenced.

Now, we're all hanging by a thread. We cover what we can while constrained by an ever-tightening budget. We do the best we can under the circumstances.

I don't know what to tell young people about journalism. On the same day a college student came by to ask me questions about the business, my older daughter told me she was considering majoring in journalism. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that young people still have some of the same romantic notions about the business that I once had. At the same time, how can I in good conscience tell them it's smart to pursue a professional path in an industry that is dying even faster than most others?

Understand, I feel heartsick about all the lost jobs throughout this sickly economy. I see what's happening in Muncie. And in Kokomo. And here in Indianapolis. The pain those families are experiencing is no different than the pain felt by my old friends throughout the newspaper business. I've had some limited experience on an unemployment line. Let me tell you, it's a lousy way to spend a weekday afternoon.

The death of a newspaper, though, resonates in a different way than the closing of an automotive plant. Newspapers are quasi-public enterprises. Newspapers have a daily relationship with the readership. We have voices, and in response, we hear your voices. The daily discourse is what keeps it fresh.

When a newspaper goes silent, a voice is lost.

In our democracy, in this marketplace of ideas, the more voices we have, the better.

The future of this newspaper? I'm not smart enough to understand the financial end of things. Just ask our administrative assistant, who has to make sense of my expense reports. This is not my area of expertise.

The good news is, we're the only paper in a one-newspaper town. (That's a sentence I never thought I'd write.) And we are owned by a giant media corporation, although that didn't do much for the Scripps-Howard-owned Rocky Mountain News. While the method of news delivery might change -- more of you read us on the Internet -- my prayer is that we will remain an important part of the civic landscape for decades to come.

The Rocky would have been 150 years old next month.

I'm proud to say that I was a small part of that history through 10 wild and wonderful years.

So excuse my self-indulgence, my navel-gazing, my failure to write today about Jeff Saturday. But I am grief stricken today. My old newspaper is dead now, and I feel like a small part of me died with it.