So many of us these days ponder how to deal with an unaccountable Internet, with its blogs and avalanche of information, some of it true, much of it not true and a lot of it hateful. That's not to mention the pornographic presentations.
This kind of advance in technology begs a return to what, I suppose, is old-fashioned journalism, with its fair and balanced news coverage, distilled by experienced reporters and editors committed to inform and bring understanding to a bewildering number of events in 24-hour-a-day news cycles.
For whatever help it might offer, I'd like to share some paragraphs from an article I wrote in the Hammond, Ind., Newspaper Guild's Page One publication, on my return from a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in the summer of 1953.
My article dealt with the Calumet region of Northwestern Indiana and nearby Illinois, communities at the steel-making end of the resources born in the Minnesota Iron Range. The area concentrated on heavy industry and transportation.
Like the Duluth-Superior area that encompasses the Range, the Calumet is one of the most interesting, most challenging newsbeats in the world; with big business, big labor, big politics, powerful pressure groups and racial problems.
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At that time, I was labeled the dean of the rewrite staff of the Hammond Times, a daily newspaper with a circulation like that of the Duluth News Tribune. What I wrote then, I believe, can apply to the biased, more-entertaining-than-informing news coverage often displayed in today's newspapers, and television and radio news programs.
I wrote:
"The job of chronicling the day-to-day events, the task of interpreting these events, the duty of informing the people and obligation of making the newspaper a positive force in the community fall to the men and women in the editorial department of your daily newspaper.
"Their job is difficult for a variety of reasons: The region itself is complex and awesome. It demands expert knowledge from the writers in political science, economics, sociology, criminology; yes, in a hundred areas of human experience.
"The reporter and writer present the most perishable of all modern products -- news. Every reader is a critic. They want speed but demand accuracy. They want their news diet to be interesting, but they insist on clarity to make it palatable. They want all the 'big' news covered, but they expect the little human happenings to spice the reading menu. They want the particular character of the community displayed in the news. They want their customs and practices respected, reported with sensitivity.
"In the great free society that the Calumet [and the Duluth area] so graphically display every day, the role of the newspaperman is vital. It is his job to report with perception the desire for self-improvement.
"The printed word, when it is believed, has enduring strength.
"The Bible is eloquent proof."
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Art Barschdorf of Hermantown is a retired reporter and editor.
