Mah was being given the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Citizens Award, and the joke went something like this: A visitor’s hat flew into Budd Inlet during a showing of Percival Landing. Mayor Mah shocked everyone by literally walking on water to retrieve it. The headline in the next day’s newspaper was, “Mayor Mah can’t swim!”
It was just a good-natured poke at newspaper headline writers (surely not at The Olympian!) who sometimes look at the news from a backward perspective.
The joke meant something more to me: What we print in the newspaper every day matters to our community, perhaps more today than ever before.
This is National Newspaper Week, which probably ranks right up there in importance to the average person with World Pickle Month. But try to imagine life without newspapers, without that daily snapshot of our community.
Since the economic crisis rolled across America, media watchers have been asking how long newspapers would survive. It turns out, they were asking the wrong question.
That’s because the demand for community-based journalism, the desire to know what is going on in your town, your county or your state, will never go away. What the pundits should have been asking is how will newspapers deliver that journalism?
We used to just deliver it via the printed newspaper. Now we deliver our news gathering through the website, our mobile apps, email alerts, blogs, through our social media sites and tablets.
Nobody knows how we’ll be delivering the most comprehensive local news package available in Thurston County in the future. We just know that there is a high demand for local news and information, and nobody else is doing it.
That’s why during an average week, 54 percent of Thurston County adults read The Olympian in print and our website adds another 6 percent unduplicated readership. The most listened to local radio station has less than a 1 percent reach, according to the research company Scarborough USA.
And when you go online, even to a non-newspaper website, most of what you’ll find there came from some newspaper or news-gathering organization. You didn’t see reporters from Google or Yahoo doing advance stories for this weekend’s Arts Walk, for example, but our reporters got the community ready for this popular twice-a-year event.
A recent study by Scarborough for the Newspaper Association of America calculated that the number of words on just the front page of a daily newspaper exceeds the number of words in an entire 30-minute network newscast. The Super Bowl reached 49 percent of U.S. households, but during that week, 70 percent of U.S. adults read a newspaper.
So, we’re here to stay. And I believe that when Doug Mah really does walk on water, we’ll have that picture on our front page.
ET CETERA
Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers are dealing with new security threats: black bears. A civilian employee was recently attacked by a black bear on JBLM’s Engineer’s Bluff. The bear escaped, and the victim was hospitalized with minor injuries. The incident is one of a series involving bears on base this summer. They are frequently sighted in training areas near JBLM, but this year they’ve been spotted in populated areas within the garrison more frequently. ...Puget Sound Energy honored Ralph and Karen Munro with their prestigious Pioneer Award back in 2008. But the unique gas lamplight and bronze plaque didn’t have a home until this week when it was dedicated at the entrance to South Puget Sound Community College, near the Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts. ...The Olympian has announced its new Halloween Lights contest. If you go all out decorating your house for Halloween, upload a picture to theolympian.com and you might win one of three $25 cash prizes. The contest begins Oct. 17, so check out the Halloween Lights on our website.
George Le Masurier, publisher of The Olympian, can be reached at 360-357-0206 or glemasurier@theolympian.com.
