Former Washington Post President and Publisher Philip L. Graham once described newspapers as “the first rough draft of history.” Graham, whose wife gained fame by supporting the publishing of the Pentagon Papers despite the Nixon Whitehouse threatening charges of treason, is — I believe — partially correct.

Newspapers are the rough draft of history, but so, so very much more.

I’ve devoted more than four decades to the printed page and spent two more decades as a child in a newspaper family who was given front row seats to the world around him.

I watched as friends and neighbors rushed to our small-town paper’s door as soon as the sound of our old, hand-fed press started up. I felt the vibrations under my feet with each page fed over the ink-laden lead type only to miraculously come out the other side printed, folded and ready to be labeled, inserted and delivered.

I remember proudly donning a mustard-colored apron with deep pockets for pica poles and discarded type, the front permanently stained from ages of ink that, despite the deepest cleansing with the red-wrapped Lava soap, never completely came out from under our fingernails.

I remember my father’s careful, scripted index cards, cross-referenced by name and by expiration date as a yellow label upon our paper meant it was time to renew your annual subscription.

I remember all I ever wanted — more than being a fireman or a ballplayer, an astronaut or a scientist — was to be a newspaperman, just like my dad.

And I remember the day he died, then experiencing death for the second time a week later when my mother, certain that at age 22 I was far too young to take over the reins, sold the paper to my uncle and his son. Along with the paper went my dreams.

I tried other things. I poured concrete and roofed houses, worked in retail and radio but I was hollow where there was supposed to be a heart. 

A year later, simply because my last name was Bloom and my dad’s reputation was so strong, I was given a chance at a tiny weekly in Northwest Iowa. Prior to my arrival, it was four pages front and back with a note at the bottom of the final page stating that was all the room they had that week. My first paper was 16 pages.

In my first year, the former Iowa Press Association named my paper the most improved. The next two years it competed for General Excellence, the top award given.

Over the years I traveled to places here and far. From Everly, Iowa I learned my first corporate newspaper lesson in Des Moines with a slew of weeklies that never had a chance. I moved to Atlanta, GA; Augusta, GA; Holyoke, MA; Sterling, CO; Hernando, MS; Benton, AR; Fort Smith, AR; Memphis, TN; Effingham, IL; Goshen, IN; Greeley, CO and finally Rockingham.

I tried radio, outdoor, my own advertising agency but the products in these industries all failed to fulfill the concept that Henry Steel Commager described: “This is what really happened, reported by a free people. It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.”

That is what newspapers mean to me.

I get it. I really do. Who has time anymore to care about our city and our county? Who has the energy to stay late to sit with school board members or commission? After all, does it really matter that communities without newspaper have a greater risk of misappropriations, higher taxes, poorer schools and greater poverty? I mean, do newspapers really matter when I can get disinformed online for free?

Today, I write my final, in what has admittedly been a sporadic column for the Richmond County Daily Journal. And I want to thank you, and the people who paid my salary, for allowing newspapers to continue to flourish in increasingly difficult times.

You, who have continued to support this paper, are truly blessed. While the Gatehouses and Gannetts, Media News Groups and Lees of the world, multimedia monoliths all, continue to slice and dice, cutting page counts and personnel to guarantee stockholder bonuses, this newspaper and the ones in your neighboring counties are owned by newspapermen. Real, live generational publishers who want to keep providing you pages despite hardship.

They may have never felt the vibrations or felt the type, hiding deep in their apron’s pockets, but they believe in the dream.

“A good newspaper,” Arthur Miller wrote, “is a nation talking to itself.”

Today I am done talking. God Bless you all.