Newspapers are a labor of love
FRANK MIELE
Numerous topics vie for my attention each week as I prepare this column.
Some of those topics are of monumental significance - the war in Iraq, the war against Islamo-fascism, global warming, media bias, illegal immigration. Some are of intense personal significance for me, such as the death of a friend or a family milestone, but I hope I can write about such a subject in ways that will emphasize our common humanity.
On occasion also in the past three years, I have written about this newspaper, and about the travails of being in a business where your best and worst work is on public display for everyone to see every day. I have had to apologize for some mistakes, and explain some unpopular decisions, and I do so gladly, but perhaps I have not taken enough time to tell you what is right about newspapers, too, about what is our strength and foundation.
Simply, it is the people I work with.
From the person who greets you at the front counter to the last person in the mail room who sees the bundles of papers flying out of the building on a conveyor belt, this business is all about people, mostly unseen, who care about this community and think a good newspaper makes us all richer. There are dozens of Inter Lake employees who work almost around the clock to take care of the thousands of minute details that must be attended to every day in order to put out a daily newspaper. Not just the reporters and editors, but also all of the advertising sales people, the people who build the ads, the people who need to run a complicated press, the people who send the newspaper to your front porch or your computer.
Do we make mistakes? Yes. Does it bother us? You bet. Can we do a better job? We are continually trying to do so. Let's admit it - newspapers face a challenge to their very existence as technology and priorities change in the 21st century, but that challenge is one we are happy to meet. There is no business most of us would rather be in. Back in the days before it would merit an OSHA inspection, they used to call that "having ink in your veins."
Even though it is soy-based ink these days, the feeling is the same. It means that when something needs to get done, there is no doubt it will get done quickly - because it has to. That could mean anything from the editor delivering a missed paper to a subscriber to the publisher taking off his tie and working with the mail-room crew to get a large paper out the door on time. It means working holidays, like tomorrow's Labor Day holiday, and it means working late every Friday and Saturday night for the sports department when they would probably rather be at a concert or movie (or, let's face it, maybe at a game they didn't have to write about!).
As for the newsroom, the folks I am most familiar with, let me just say that there is one common thread that goes through everything - we are here to do the best job we can to make the newspaper as good as we can. Sometimes that means putting on boots and sloshing through a cow field; sometimes it means driving closer to a fire when other people are trying to get away; sometimes it means being the last one to check a page and having the satisfaction of saying "We need to fix that." Often it means working late because a story needs to be told.
Remember, that newspapers are part of an industry, perhaps the only one, which manufactures a new product each and every day from scratch. So, yes, occasionally things go wrong, but more importantly a thousand things go right each day so that hundreds of thousands of words are delivered from us to you every morning.
Maybe every business is the same way - people doing their best for other people. But on this Labor Day holiday, I wanted to take a moment to say thanks to the people I work with for their enthusiasm, their dedication and their professionalism. In an era of constant complaint, it is worth remembering not just the people who work for us when we go shopping, out to eat or to the movies, but also to remember why we love the jobs we do ourselves.