“Never tell me the odds!”
~ Han Solo, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
By CAITLIN WALKER | [email protected]
If you know me, you know I am good at a few things, but my true specialty is making it awkward. So this week, we’re going to jump right to a question I ask every day, and one you may be asking, too.
What’s the point of a newspaper?
We’ve always called the paper the weekly miracle, mostly because it’s hard to produce, but also because the odds are not great. More than 40% of U.S. newspapers have closed their doors. The HT hasn’t gone the way of the dinosaur, but we’ve been exceedingly close.
Plus, it’s 2026. We have technology now! We have itty-bitty computers (and calculators!) in our pockets. We are more saturated with “information” than at any other time in history.
And yet, somehow, so much of life still slips right past us.
If we’re going to make it, we need a point. A reason. A why.
Newspapers do a lot of important things, but that’s not enough anymore. I think the distinctive value of a community newspaper is in the little things. Honor rolls. Anniversaries. Tie-breaking home runs and buzzer beaters. Fuzzy pictures of smiling kids holding enormous fish. Grandma’s elaborate handmade quilt winning Best of Show at the fair.
These are not things algorithms prioritize, but they are moments that pull our existence out of a little glass box and put it back in the real world, where it has color and life and meaning.
Without a community newspaper, our story is nothing more than scattered ones and zeros. Our job each week is to gather it all together and show we were here — and that we’ve been here for 141 years and counting.
Community newspapers survive because communities decide their own stories are worth telling.
I think ours is.
Do you?