When I was in eighth grade at St. Paul’s Elementary School in Norristown, our teacher decided to launch a class newspaper.
My best friend, Guy Mercogliano, was appointed editor, and I was one of the columnists. The teacher was Miss Laura Zatny, a former nun too rebellious to be contained by convent walls.
Before the first issue went to print on one of those mimeograph machines with the fragrant blue ink, Miss Zatny pulled an editorial I wrote challenging the concept of an all-merciful God.
There had been some tragedy in the world and I posited the perennial "Why would God let this happen?" question.
"This is a Catholic school, for chrissakes!" she scolded.
She spiked the column, and my friend Merc and I resigned in protest.
Except for delivering the Norristown Times Herald in my neighborhood, the short-lived St. Paul Gazette was my first exposure to newspapers, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
To me, newspapers epitomize democracy.
They’re all about sticking up for the little guy and challenging bullies wherever they exist. Rooting out corruption, exposing waste and revealing dangerous conditions are all worthy pursuits of a newspaper.
Some say newspapers got too wrapped up in telling their communities what’s good for them, or too consumed by what the paper looked like instead of the content of its pages.
I think a good newspaper strikes a balance between the watchdog and the town crier.
I’ve worked at five newspapers in my nearly 30-year career, and I don’t have any answers for the current crisis.
Merc is a partner in a Philadelphia law firm, and I’m still tilting at windmills from my parapet on the rampart of democracy we call newspapers.
The industry is going through revolutionary changes. Will print editions disappear completely? Will newspapers become a Web-only medium? Will newspapers be replaced by Internet bloggers.
For democracy to survive, there will always be the nucleus of a community newspaper staffed by responsible reporters and editors.
God willing, that is.
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