Weekly newspapers were weekly for a reason

     Just about every community around here had its own weekly newspaper in the middle of the last century. Most people got one or more daily papers, but everybody got the local weekly.
     They came out weekly for a good reason: In small communities, you could tell all the news fit to print in just one paper a week. The idea of publishing more often that than came mostly from the owners, who wanted to sell more advertising.
     Funeral directors, too, wanted to let neighbors know about deaths in the community more often, because not everyone was considerate enough to die on Tuesday or Wednesday, in time for the day of publication.
     Even today, you could probably get most of the week's real news in one good thick paper a week. The rest we could do without. Except for the comics; that's one place where papers are cutting back that I think is a big mistake. I've always said there was more truth on the comic pages than the rest of the paper altogether. Especially the opinion page.
     Of course, it depends on your definition of local news. I learned over the years that readers often had a different definition of local news than the editors and reporters who put out the paper.
     The occasional reader survey, once management decided to risk spending the money to really find out what readers read, showed that the most important news to readers was the obituaries, followed by Dear Abby. Then they wanted to know what their neighbors were getting into. Nosy, but loyal, those readers. I found out the hard way that they did not agree with me that who had Sunday dinner at the Joneses was not very important news.
     There is an old saying that a daily newspaper is a continuing education, and it's true. But not necessarily just for readers. You can learn something new all the time when you're producing a paper, too.
     I suppose it won't be long before they get rid of paper newspapers, and we click along on line to get information.
     People have figured out that information may not be news, any more than news is always fact. Opinion is more controversial, which makes it more readable, even by people who claim to dislike all the controversy of our times.
     The conventional wisdom today is that anyone with a computer can be a reporter today. I suppose that's true; I started a long career with less. But I wonder if whoever is producing whatever replaces the news as I defined it will learn as much over the years from their daily work as I did.