Maybe I’m becoming an old fuddy-duddy, but in recent weeks I’ve found myself speaking glowingly for the old-fashioned dead tree paper edition of the local newspaper.

No, it’s not that I think the Grand Forks Herald is a particularly stellar paper, anything but that. I do think it’s unfortunate, however, that subscribing to a local newspaper has become anathema to twenty-somethings. So much so, in fact, that I’m finding my usually optimistic perspective challenged by my peers’ reading habits, or lack their of.

To put it in a phrase: I read the local paper to better understand my neighbors. For me, it’s a question of ethics and ideas.  And despite the helpful use of Twitter and blogs, in this town of 50,000 there’s no better way to follow local happenings than the newspaper. From letters to the editors to school board meeting reports, from traffic ticket statistics to mosquito spraying schedules, from stories of local movers-and-shakers to those on a small disc golf tournament nearby, the paper informs me of local goings-on and local perspectives in ways unparalleled by other media.

Maybe if I worked at a big office the local gossip I might pick up there would suffice. Or maybe if I listened to North Dakota radio stations or watched the TV news I could live without my paper.  Maybe if I lived in a larger news market, I wouldn’t need the newspaper.  But as my life is, were I to cancel my subscription I feel confident I would become a poorer citizen and pastor.

For example, earlier in the summer I voted in local elections of which I wouldn’t have known were I not following the candidate profiles and studying the sample ballot in the paper. Similarly, this week’s Forum Communications series, “Running with Oil” on the North Dakota oil boom is fantastically informative on a state issue (out west, mostly) I could easily overlook otherwise.

Let me be clear, I’m not exactly praising the quality of the paper, bless its heart. The website is horrendous, partly making the dead tree edition so superior. The local stories are fine, but certainly often of questionable quality and the coverage beyond local and state issues is paltry. Most editorials are too mainline, non-confrontational, and safe. I’m not praising the Grand Forks Herald for Pulitzer quality work, I’m praising them for a product that gets the job done — informing me of local happenings, keeping local politicians on their toes, shining the light of scrutiny where their resources can manage.

When I was in college at St. Olaf, the student government funded a program that put racks of free newspapers in every dorm and student hangout area — the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal, if my memory serves me. You’d see college students hanging out waiting for friends while reading up on the news. It was a beautiful site. Surely many college students today read their national and international news, like me, online and through internet-based news aggregators. But nothing beats that dead tree at my doorstep each morning, informing me which roads are closed on my morning commute.

image by Kay Pat