I remember all I ever wanted - more than being a fireman or a ballplayer, an astronaut or a scientist - was to be a newspaperman, just like my dad.Īnd I remember the day he died, then experiencing death for the second time a week later when my mother, certain that at age 22 I was far too young to take over the reins, sold the paper to my uncle and his son. I remember my father’s careful, scripted index cards, cross-referenced by name and by expiration date as a yellow label upon our paper meant it was time to renew your annual subscription. I remember proudly donning a mustard-colored apron with deep pockets for pica poles and discarded type, the front permanently stained from ages of ink that, despite the deepest cleansing with the red-wrapped Lava soap, never completely came out from under our fingernails. I felt the vibrations under my feet with each page fed over the ink-laden lead type only to miraculously come out the other side printed, folded and ready to be labeled, inserted and delivered. I watched as friends and neighbors rushed to our small-town paper’s door as soon as the sound of our old, hand-fed press started up. I’ve devoted more than four decades to the printed page and spent two more decades as a child in a newspaper family who was given front row seats to the world around him. Newspapers are the rough draft of history, but so, so very much more. Graham once described newspapers as “the first rough draft of history.” Graham, whose wife gained fame by supporting the publishing of the Pentagon Papers despite the Nixon Whitehouse threatening charges of treason, is - I believe - partially correct. Former Washington Post President and Publisher Philip L.
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