ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” article. It is an editorial by the editor.
Some readers of Townbroadcast may have gotten the wrong impression after perusing my editorial from a week ago.
I hereby reiterate my intention to shut down this on-line rag, but not this very instant. I wanted to give someone else the opportunity to take this over if they had a mind to, so that means giving them information and some time to think it over. I must confess that I am not optimistic about anyone taking the reins and giving it a shot.
As I related last week, the job of editor and proprietor is available at no cost, but it is also bereft of opportunities to make money. Yes. I’ve been doing this gratis for the last 13 years with the understanding that after I retired I didn’t want to spend my “Golden Years” sitting in front of a television set and waiting to die. I wanted to do something that perhaps could make a difference, something that mattered, a sort of weird version of “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
It’s been an interesting ride and I can say that I’ve been doing what I was meant to do for more than a half century. Along he way, I discovered I was the only game in town after the death of so many community newspapers, including ye olde Wayland Globe. So when I attended public meetings, I was the only member of the press present. Yet I was told told, “Frankly, Dave, we’d rather you not show up.”
I suppose that’s because my presence and ability to tell others what’s going on invited the negative side of public discourse and public action. I haven’t been well known for telling “perky and positive” stories about our public officials and their activities. In fact, you could call me (with apologies to former Vice President Spiro Agnew) a “a nattering nabob of negativism.”
I still don’t know exactly when I will walk away from this noble undertaking, but it won’t be very long. I’m getting long in the tooth and some of my adversaries suggest I don’t hear or understand what’s going on in meetings well, so I’m more prone to publishing incorrect information. For when I’ve been guilty, I apologize most sincerely.
But Wayland, Martin, Hopkins, Moline and Dorr have been missing a local community newspaper, and I fear that time honored service is no longer believed to be necessary by so many. We are living in a news desert.
As the late brilliant comedian George Carlin said, and I’ve quoted often: “But nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.”
I still anxiously await word of somebody willing to take over as editor and proprietor, but I’m not holding my breath. I certainly don’t blame them for declining the opportunity.
