A world without newspapers? Heaven forbid…

Fantasy novels often make the obscure obvious by means of a simple trick. What if electricity stopped working? What if children woke up one day and were all the size of adults? What if the moon were to disappear from the sky? What if a little girl could fall down a rabbit hole?

Such "what if" questions provide for wickedly fun entertainment as we can imagine all the mischief that would occur if the world suddenly went topsy-turvy.

In that spirit, I thought it might be entertaining to reflect on a world without newspapers.

Of course, you don't have to look back too many years to a time when there were no newspapers. Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440, they just couldn't exist.

It is instructive therefore to look at what the world was like before Gutenberg. Didn't they have a name for the period before the 1400s? Oh yes, the Dark Ages, or more politely, the medieval era. So, unless, you are looking to live in a period of decline, superstition and lawlessness, you must hope that our fantasy of a world without newspapers is not like the real world without newspapers that used to exist.

But are we giving too much weight to newspapers? Could they really have helped to civilize the world? Well, they started to be printed in Germany almost immediately after the printing press was invented. There was apparently a huge pent-up passion for news and information that finally found its release, and soon thereafter the Renaissance blossomed, democracy flourished and liberty prevailed.

No one can prove the cause and effect relationship, but no one can convince me that newspapers didn't play a role in the invention of the modern world. Nor can I imagine a stable, functioning world with true liberty unless we maintain the tradition of the independent newspaper.

Imagine that there were no Daily Inter Lake in Northwest Montana and no other print newspapers anywhere else.

Just where would you go for information? The government? You know where that would lead - to tyranny. A web site? How would you know that the web site you visited contained the kind of information you want? And how do you know you could trust it? Websites seem to encourage people to say anything they want, in any way they want. There is little if any distinction between fact and opinion, and more often than not phony information is passed from person to person via e-mail. By the time it is established that the story was inaccurate, half the world has heard it.

You can't do that in a newspaper. Print products are held to a higher standard, one which we proudly follow. If you read it in the Inter Lake, you can rest assured that we have researched it, confirmed it, attributed it and stand behind it. If we make a mistake, we will say so. But on the Internet, you can't hope for any such assurances.

There's also the problem that the Internet itself is like the Tower of Babel, an endless cacophony of competing voices, all of which seem to envision themselves as the fount of wisdom. Is it even humanly possible to sort through the millions of websites online (and the billions or trillions of pages' in order to find a news source as authoritative and reliable as the local newspaper?

Suppose that someone in your family had died and you wanted to place an obituary. With no community newspaper as a central forum, you might have to pick between dozens of web sites that contain local news. Should you send the obituary to all of them? How would you find them all? Half or more of them would have no local contact person at all, but rather a webmaster from half a country away, or half a world away. Do you really want to trust your friend or father's obituary to a startup company in Pakistan?

The Inter Lake has been here for 120 years. We have a commitment to the community and to telling your stories - fairly, fully and accurately. Do you think you will get that kind of commitment from a couple of teenagers who start a website because "it'll be cool"?

Think of the variety of news that a daily newspaper gathers in one place for your convenience. Not just the obituaries and the world, local and national news, but also the law enforcement roundup, the daily calendar, the results and game stories from prep rivalries, the pictures of your grandchildren in the school play, the reports on graduations, and the business news.

Then think of all the additional parts in the newspaper that aren't news related - entertainment features such as the crossword puzzle, the bridge column, the trivia column, the sudoku, comic strips, advice columns, the horoscope and even the "thought of the day." Recently, when we moved the thought of the day to a new location, we heard from one reader who said his day was ruined. (We moved it back!)

What about the classifieds and the legal notices? If newspapers go away, you are going to have to hunt those things down. Do you want to miss out on an important meeting because you didn't know where to look for the announcement? And what about all the advertising specials and coupons? How will businesses be able to target the audience they need to reach without a newspaper to spread the word?

Don't just take my word for it. You can imagine for yourself these and more consequences of not having a daily newspaper in your community.

But rest assured, the Daily Inter Lake is not going anywhere. I have on my desk a copy of an editorial written by the editor of the Inter Lake in 1939, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the paper. The first issue was printed in the then-new town of Demersville on Aug. 23, 1889, by C.O. Ingalls. Demersville has long since vanished, but the Inter Lake continues to serve the community.

We might even still take our marching orders from Mr. Ingalls, who in his opening announcement, wrote: "This paper is owned by no political party or clique and proposes to work faithfully for this portion of Missoula county [as it was then] and its citizens."

The editor in 1939 noted that thanks to this wise policy, the Inter Lake had "weathered the storms of a half century… whereas many other newspapers have come and gone."

It is worth remembering today that newspapers coming and going is not a new phenomenon. It is part of the routine cycle of business, but we echo the words of editor Harry Kelly from 1939, when he said:

"For fifty years, The Inter Lake has lived through panics, depressions and recessions, and while we do not expect to have much to say about it then, we predict it will be celebrating its hundredth anniversary in 1989."

That prediction came true, and if I may say so, we fully anticipate the paper marking its 150th anniversary in 2039. Who knows, with any luck, maybe I'll still be around to help celebrate it.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com