RIP ECT

I didn’t think it would be this difficult.

As a two-year employee of the East County Times, I was the staff rookie. As a hardened journalist, I’m supposed to be able to weather the delivery of bad news, no matter how closely it affects me.

But the news that the paper I’ve worked for since September 2016 would be put to its death with the Nov. 8 issue was a hard pill to swallow. While that news had barely sunk it, we were told yesterday that this Thursday’s issue would be the paper’s swan song.

So today, with every word I typed, every verbal exchange with a cherished colleague, every phone call about one subject that usually ended with an invitation to an event or meeting later in the month ending in a burst of tears, I realized I should be in the tissue business instead of the news business.

We all know journalism is struggling. It has struggled financially since the real rooting of online content delivery and it suffered all the more during the Great Recession, with the financial collapse of the housing, banking and automotive industries — which just so happened to be newspapers’ biggest advertisers.

The news business never fully recovered from the recession, and now we have to look over our shoulders and worry about every stranger who comes through the front door, thanks to a president who has declared us all the collective enemy of the people and encourages violence and spilling blood as accepted ways of handling differences and grievances.

Community newspapers such as the East County Times provide a regular voice to communities that are not routinely covered by bigger news outlets. Sure, camera crews will descend upon the community when a murder-suicide occurs, or when a local wins an Olympic gold medal.

But who’s there to cover the creation of a local after-school sewing club and the life lessons it will provide? The dedicated volunteers who take time away from families and demanding jobs to help clean the local river or creek? The PTA fundraiser, the church food pantry, the high school basketball team, the new proposed apartment complex that residents oppose?

It's rather fitting that my final ECT story is about local efforts to preserve a bit of Bethlehem Steel history. I kept this proof page as my own effort in preserving a little bit of local journalism history.                                                                       Photo by Marge Neal

That’s right — the community weekly. Reporters who toil in obscurity, spending their lives in community meetings, photographing special events, taking a late night call on their personal cell phone because the interview is needed to provide a well-balanced story and in general doing everything they have to to produce work of which they can be proud. All for a paycheck that barely covers basic living costs, rarely stretches from one pay day to the next and hasn’t contained a raise in too many years to count.

And you know what? None of that matters because we love what we do so much and we take pride in providing that voice to our community. Sometimes it’s the community where we grew up; sometimes it’s a community we adopt and come to love as if it were our hometown.

So at about 2 p.m. this afternoon, a small but mighty talented staff from writers to designers, paginators and advertising executives, collectively pushed the button that sent a final issue of the East County Times winging off to the printer. More than 31,000 copies of the paper will hit the streets on Thursday, with news of our demise on the front page, and the inside filled with all the usual features readers have come to depend on, including news about a local bank merger, an effort to preserve some lamp posts that once stood sentry on the Bethlehem Steel Corp.’s Sparrows Point plant and plenty of informative election coverage. There are the usual obituaries honoring the lives of departed locals, the police news page and the calendar of events. And more.

News that everyone looks forward to receiving, and that few people understand how difficult it is to provide that service free of charge. As it turns out, it became impossible.

I sure hope someone notices when the Nov. 8 issue — which my colleague Patrick Taylor and I had been looking forward to for more than a year because of election night coverage — does not hit the streets.