National Newspaper Week is about community

News organizations across the nation are observing National Newspaper Week Oct. 6-12, which is one reason you will find quotations about newspapers sprinkled throughout this week’s edition of the Bulletin.

As it happens, early voting opened Tuesday at the Doña Ana County government building in Las Cruces. At noon, I counted 150 waiting in a line extending all the way to the north entrance. A couple that had made it about half the distance, in front of the commissioners’ chambers, said they had been line a little more than half an hour. (On Oct. 19, more early voting locations open and waits should ease.)

Sadly, you will also find an extended obituary for Sammy Lopez, a man with ink in his veins and a passion for newspapers. He had been a publisher of newspapers all over the state and beyond, including the Las Cruces Sun-News and Deming Headlight, and was serving as executive director of the New Mexico Press Association when he passed away on Oct. 6.

Watching people line up to participate in an election was a fitting scene for National Newspaper Week. Local news matters in ways large and small – indeed, “the small stuff,” the local sports scores and celebrations, community information, local advertisers, and workings of local businesses and public agencies, are not “small” matters to the community.

A statement attributed to Walter Cronkite holds, "Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.” If that is true, the newspaper is not only an instrument of democracy but also of community.

National Newspaper Week is a celebration not of paper products alone – as so many readers now consume their news online – but of news: Local news, local reporting that does not mess around with its readers, high-quality reviews and analysis, varied opinions based on facts and argument: a venue for a community’s conversation.