Christmas, community & an ongoing conversation

Christmas is a time to remember our blessings, and for me, having the opportunity to work at the Daily Inter Lake since 1984 counts as one of the best in a life full of them.

Come Jan. 24, I will have worked at this paper for 28 years, which will be exactly half my life. Considering that I never planned to be a journalist, never expected to live in Montana, and had virtually never heard of Kalispell until the week before I moved here, that’s not too bad. And considering that I had lived in six different cities in the preceding seven years, it is nothing short of a miracle that I actually put down roots and called someplace home.

“Someplace” turned out to be the best place of all — Kalispell, Montana — and I never seriously considering moving anywhere else again after my first few weeks here.

Nor, for that matter, did I ever seriously think of finding a new employer. The Inter Lake has long since been part of my family, and I am part of it. As they say, ink runs in my veins.

But when I thought about it recently, I realized that ink runs in all our veins. In a very real way, the community newspaper is the lifeblood of America. Reaching back to the days of Ben Franklin, we Americans have always counted on our local newspaper to inform us, intrigue us and infuriate us. Indeed, as in all love affairs, there have been many fits of pique along with moments of passion in our journey together. You might say that for most of us, newspapers not only stir the blood, but sometimes make it boil.

Indeed, the more I study the history of newspapers, including the Daily Inter Lake, the more surprised I am that some people think the local newspaper (and its editors) should be the equivalent of an obedient child — seen but not heard. That is anything but the norm.

Instead, local newspapers have more often been brash, bold and beautifully independent — clamoring for what they thought was right, laboring to fix what they saw as wrongs, proud to lead their communities and not remain in the background.

Certainly, the Inter Lake has been a part of everyday life in the Flathead for many years — even before it was published every day. Started as a weekly in 1889 in the town of Demersville, the paper moved a few miles north with almost all the other businesses in that town when Kalispell was founded in 1891. The original editor, C.O. Ingalls, was by all accounts a feisty gentleman who did not hesitate to call ’em like he saw ’em — and for that matter so was his wife and reporter, Emma, who famously took on a corrupt judge in Demersville and won.

She wrote in one news story, “His court is famous at the Supreme Court of Montana because of his arbitrary decisions which were always in favor of the last drink of whisky.”

C.O. Ingalls was publisher of the paper, with a brief gap, until 1894, when it was sold to R.M. Goshorn, who also never shied away from a fight. He continued the Inter Lake as a weekly until 1908. Then, after his son’s untimely death, Goshorn decided to turn the paper into a daily to keep his mind off his troubles. Finally, in 1913, he sold the paper to the only group that has ever owned it as a strictly partisan publication. As reported by the Inter Lake in 1919, “following the presidential campaign of 1912, a large number of progressives in the county formed a company... and bought the paper from Mr. Goshorn.”

Indeed, progressivism in the wake of Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose run for president in 1912 was so popular in Kalispell that former Sen. Joseph M. Dixon, owner of the Missoulian and campaign manager for TR, launched his own failed bid for a progressive third party from Kalispell in 1913.

Those old-time stories from yellowed and brittle newspapers tell the history of America better than any historian could ever do. Reading through the archives of the Inter Lake or any other newspaper that has lasted more than 100 years will take you on a journey that is vivid and diverse. If the past is prologue, it is also much more. The further we get from it, the more it seems like a strange new world altogether. Indeed, it is hard to follow the currents of history and linger in the backwaters of forgotten lore without feeling somewhat like the explorers Lewis & Clark pressing into the unknown.

At the same time, the newspaper is itself a journal of discovery — recounting the highs and lows of a community that is inventing itself over time. We’ve discovered some good things about ourselves, and some horrible things — and we’ve held an ongoing debate about how to get better.

In fact, if you had to summarize the role of community newspapers, it would be just that —  to hold a conversation. And it’s not a conversation between the newspaper and the community, but rather an invitation for the community to have a conversation with itself.

These columns I write are one small part of that, geared toward my personal interests in American history and national politics, but the paper is so much more than one person’s opinion. That’s why I labeled my column as the “Editor’s 2 cents.” You can take or leave my opinion, but you can’t do without the newspaper because the newspaper is all of us — our past, our present and our future.

A community paper that is worthy of the name is filled with the hopes and dreams of thousands of people. When you open up these pages, you are literally taking the pulse of Kalispell, of Whitefish, Columbia Falls and Flathead County. And you’ll have your hands full with evertything that makes a community — pet peeves and philosophy, kids and old people, county fairs and local colleges, planning and zoning, businesses and charities, holiday greetings, letters from readers, government for good and for bad, plenty of pictures with lots of local faces, schools and churches, fund-raisers and festivals, crime and justice, comics and puzzles, and all the sports that you can possibly fit. Plus all that beautiful advertising that make it all possible in the first place.    

That, of course, is just the start — the raw material that makes the community newspaper take on its most important role — as the glue that holds a community together, the common identity that is reflected back to each one of us — the conscience, the history and the future of our hometowns.

So, on this Christmas holiday, when you are counting your blessings, I hope you will agree with me that no matter how much you may not like one story or one reporter or even one editor, you see the value of having a newspaper that tells the story of you, your kids and your neighbors — tells what makes us live and breathe, work and play. Tells what inspires us and what we fear. Tells the truth about our strengths and our troubles.

Community newspapers cannot die — because if they do, then America will have lost its heart.