Every once in a while, a photo will just grab you. Won’t let go.
The News-Banner does an “exchange” with a few area newspapers. Well, actually , it’s down to two: Portland and Berne. We used to get many more, but as those newspapers were bought up by large corporations, the beancounters wanted to eliminate every possible expense, one of which was mailing out “free” copies every day.
When I was at the Decatur paper, one of the reporter’s daily tasks was to scour the neighboring papers’ front pages and the police and court news. Anyone from Decatur who got anything from a speeding ticket to a court summons and on up in Jay, Wells, and even Van Wert County across the state line could not hide. That included divorces which, at that time, some people sought to hide by doing it in a different county.
Whoever sorted the daily mail here once had a stack of the “exchange papers” from Decatur, Berne, Portland, Hartford City, Huntington, Columbia City, Kendallville and Auburn. When I first started here, Gene McCord was still coming in to write the daily obituaries. He would go through those papers looking for any Wells County connection. Jim Barbieri would often browse through them looking for story ideas. Joe Smekens and Paul Beitler used them to keep up with area high school sports.
Times change. It is absolutely no coincidence that the two remaining newspapers the N-B continues to trade copies with are also family-owned. To the best of my knowledge, Portland and the N-B are the only two remaining independent, family-owned daily papers in Indiana. Berne, owned by the Musselman family, publishes three days a week.
That was one huge digression. Was it nostalgic? Somewhat of a lamentation? Guilty.
The Portland Commercial Review’s front-page style is to usually have one dominant photo. Sometimes they’re pretty good, sometimes they’re not. Not being critical at all. The N-B has the same daily challenge of producing a compelling product.
But sometimes we — and they — hit a home run. Obviously, one person’s home run might be another’s strike out, but the picture nearby was one that grabbed me. This, to me, is iconic. This, to me, is America. It reminded me of the first time I fully appreciated Norman Rockwell’s classic “Freedom of Speech” illustration (also reprinted nearby).
As I recall, Rockwell’s drawing was part of a series depicting what President Franklin Roosevelt called America’s four core freedoms — of Speech, of Worship, from Want and from Fear — in his 1941 State of the Union address. The paintings, like virtually every one that Rockwell ever drew, were published in the Saturday Evening Post. This one was also made into a poster to help sell War Bonds. It depicts a working man surrounded by people more “properly” dressed at a public meeting — the lesson being that no matter our station in life, we all have an equal voice. It had its critics, mostly for having only one female in the crowd, and she barely visible. Interestingly, his final version was the result of at least four others attempts, one that survived having two ladies being a clearly visible part of the assembly.
Anyway, the photo by The C-R’s Ray Cooney is a similar portrait of small-town America government. It was taken a month or so ago in the aftermath of a “State of the City” address by Dunkirk’s mayor who, I am sure, was properly dressed for the occasion. One of the citizens in attendance wanted to talk to the mayor about something on his mind. So he approached the podium — there was no indication in the accompanying story that he did it improperly, so we can assume it was after the meeting had been adjourned. One of the city council members felt free to join the conversation.
This, folks, is America. It’s democracy at work. While we have a number of problems these days, some of which we occasionally rant about in this space on Saturday mornings, there is much that is right. That includes our basic freedom of speech and access to our local officials.
I think Ray’s portrait of our Freedom of Speech is just as frame-able as Norman Rockwell’s.
Maybe more so. It’s for real.
miller@news-banner.com
