Stories past, and future

By Jim Butler
Almost 50 years of newspapering is a lot of words.
These are the last ones and they are as much personal privilege as poblic interest.
A newspaper career that began midway through one century and ends more than a decade into another spans a range of events almost too broad to summarize.
That likely would be the case of any 50-year period one might settle on, but 1967-2015 happens to be the one of concern here.
What began with typewriter ends with a computer.
Trips to the newsroom library are long gone. Research begins and ends with Google.
Scanning sheets and sheets of negative proofs in the photo morgue to find a particular image has given way to digital archival searches, with almost instant response.
Story leads now are just as likely to be found on Facebook as at the corner coffee shop.
Once written, the stories are as likely to be read on a newspaper’s web site as they are in its printed product, assuming it still has one.
Looking back, would newspapers have been as effective as they were in covering these topics had they been electronic, not printed?
Civil Rights. Vietnam. Johnson. Memphis. King. Kennedy. Nixon. Watergate. Ford. Carter. Iran-Contra. Reagan. Shuttle. Desert Storm. Bush. Clinton. Bush. 9/11. Desert Shield. Enduring Freedom. Obama.
McKeithen. Edwards. Treen. Roemer. Foster. Blanco. Jindal.
Don’t know, and only time will tell about the stories that are to come.
I’ll follow whatever the coverage might be, printed or digital, as a reader, not as a reporter or an editor.
The eyeshade and the red editing pen have been put down, to be replaced with a golf club or a fishing rod.
For me, as the wire services used to say at story’s end, it’s -30-.