North Main Street

 

I came across this photograph during one of those frigid days last week. It was taken on an equally frigid day sometime in the late 1930s I surmise.  It's my uncle Bill Fish Jr. on the left and the identities of the other fellows are lost in time. And look closely and you'll see another pedestrian walking behind.

Yesterday I walked up from the Coudersport post office, navigating my way around dirty snow piles, puddles, and the uneven, frost-heaved slate sidewalks that used to be prime roller skating territory. The corner of Fifth Street and North Main, my old neighborhood.

The People's Paper

Recollections of my newspapering life are far in the background of all the years of living since. But sometimes, like yesterday after listening to a radio program about the "future of the free press", I allow myself to go back to that familiar place.

1978 in the back room of The Potter Enterprise

I still feel a pull toward that life - the satisfying work of making sense of a lengthy school board meeting, following borough council's actions, editing the words of various small community correspondents reporting comings and goings from places like Card Creek, Germania, Hebron. And sharing the birth announcements, telling the wedding stories and writing obituaries, making sure that there are no misspellings - after all it is a public record as I was told in the early days of that work.

The back room functions, setting type (though I never actually set type but rather used phototypesetting equipment, then a computer), designing ads, choosing typefaces, and pasteup. And the work of putting the pages together. Then it was Wednesday – unloading the van just back from the printers and getting those thousands of weeklies where they needed to be. The satisfying feeling of the gray mailbags, properly labeled on their way to the post office.

It was, of course, a group effort with many hard-working people doing their jobs - often two or three jobs. Dedicated people and good friends.

And when it was Thursday, we'd begin again.

I had already pushed publish on my post about propaganda and distrust of the media yesterday when I came across this written when my grandfather took the reins of The Potter Enterprise in 1920.

"In the consolidation of the Enterprise and Independent, the owners have the means and hand to give the people of Potter County one of the greatest newspapers ever published. And that it will be, indeed, and truthful of the duty we owe the people of this county. It shall be our persistent effort and loyal and earnest endeavor to so conduct this publication that it will be, in deed and truth, "The People's Paper."

"From its columns we shall divorce all personal animosities and ideas of favor and will present fearlessly and consistently the news in all its phases.

"This paper will stand opposed at all times to corruption and graft and the control, politically of a few, to the detriment of the many. We are in the fight to be of service to ALL the people and we shall not hesitate to expose and make public through its columns any acts or practices on the part of the public officials, whom we believe are violating the trust and failing in the performance of duties that have been reposed in them.

"As the editor of the Enterprise, the writer is not unmindful of the duty he owes the people of Potter County and fully cognizant of that duty. It shall be his constant aim to serve fairly all people and promote all things that may result in the public good. The editor of the Enterprise wants to merit the confidence and support in his efforts and pledges them at all times championship of Right, Justice and Equality and asks for hearty support and cooperation."

Although I've been dissociated from newspapering in Potter County for many years, there's more than a little regret in acknowledging that. As we say these days, it's in my DNA.

I'm Naming It

What year did we have Civics* in high school? That's the year I sat in one of those uncomfortable chairs with the attached desk and listened to Mr. Berger talk about the propaganda techniques that allowed the Nazis to murder millions of Jews and then he told us of the propaganda techniques being employed in the Soviet Union, with its state-run media and silencing of dissenting voices.

I had just read The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank a teenage girl like me, hidden away in an attic for years, writing in her diary - she even named it - before being snatched away to unspeakable horror after someone reported their hideaway. She died, never to have a chance to make real the dreams she shared with "Dear Kitty."

People - folks like us baby boomers sitting in Mr. Berger's classroom in the 1960s - shook their heads and thought it can't happen here. We had Walter Cronkite on the news every night. We had The Buffalo Evening News and The Bradford Era and The Olean Times Herald delivered to our doors every day by the paperboys and papergirls, some of whom were likely in that classroom. We had The Potter Enterprise for our local news and I knew that was dependable because my mother and my aunt and uncle and grandfather worked there.

In fact, my journalist grandfather wrote this in  1948:

"True facts." There is one that gets Golly down. If the fact is a truth, as our dictionary states, what other facts are there except true? Golly would like to know.

Remember when the news media were hesitant to brand any politician as a liar? A radio piece** I distinctly remember, featured various NPR correspondents and editors discussing the terminology, finally giving Trump and his minions a pass on what appeared from my vantage point to be blatant lies. And I wondered at the time why the media was so hesitant to call lying people liars. It was the time of Kellyanne Conway's "alternative facts."

Now it's commonplace for Trump's lies to be called out. Lies about the economy, lies about 'domestic terrorists,' lies about liaisons with Jeffrey Epstein, lies about Greenland and lies about tariffs, lies about the 2020 election, lies about the East Wing, lies about the Kennedy Center. But is it too late?

Have you put your attention on a federal government website lately? The White House site welcomes us to the Golden Age. Then we're directed to January 6: The Real Story.

And if  you want to be truly chilled, take a look at the Media Offenders tab on that White House site: "A Record of the Media's False and Misleading Stories Flagged by The White House. Scroll for the Truth." There's even a link to "submit a tip."

We've been told and continue to be told by our government that the media - journalists charged with keeping an eye on the workings of the people's (yours and mine) elected representatives  – is 'fake', 'dishonest', 'biased', 'liberal.' And not only are we instructed to disbelieve that which we've seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears, we're asked to report the truth-tellers.

I ask, as a former public relations person, and more importantly as a thinking, observant human being, how can this be? Are we really going to allow this to continue - this artifice, these distortions, these lies?

*1960s American public high-school students were typically required to take three courses in civics—Civics, Problems of Democracy, and U.S. Government.

**I had to look up that piece to check my memory and I link it here. I believe it wasn't until shortly before the 2020 election that liar was regularly used to describe Donald Trump.

An Anniversary

From 1955:

The Golly guy celebrated an anniversary Tuesday, Feb. 1.

It was on Feb. 1, 1920, that the late Arch Bernard and the Golly guy took ownership and possession of the Potter Enterprise from the late M.T. Stokes.

According to our figures that totals more than 1800 Thursdays during the 35 years.

A lot of work–
Tons of ink–
More tons of paper–
A lot of headaches–

And when it's all summed up those 35 years have been happy and satisfying years. Golly is glad to have had a part in editing and publishing YOUR weekly newspaper.

clipped from Potter Enterprise, 1920

From 1968 

Away back about 1920, Arch Bernard came to Coudersport and edited the Potter Democrat. He offered to Golly more pay as a printer than he received at the Potter Journal. So Golly changed jobs.

After a short time, he proposed we buy the Democrat. Neither of us had more than a dollar but made the deal all on credit.

In a few more months, we bought the Enterprise. That piled more debt. We were in away over our heads.

Within a year or so Bernard sold his interest to the late George W. Daniels and departed. Mr. Daniels had no newspaper experience.

Golly had a long uphill battle to pay off. He worked seven days a week and a lot of nights but he made it. During the time a son and three daughters arrived at Golly's home. We could not do so much for the youngsters as we would have liked but they reached maturity and we are proud of them.

From the day Golly took a hand in the operation to the present (1968), there has not been a year without an increase in circulation. Today it stands at 7,500. Mr. Stokes printed about 1500. The subscription was $1.50 per year. Not over half of the readers even paid the $1.50. Such a business!

It is a most remarkable growth and we are very proud of it, but in his old age – if 94 is old – Golly only manages to write this column. Maybe this is "small potatoes and few in a hill."

From the 21st Century perspective of this granddaughter, offspring of one of his four children, a woman whose love for newspapering and printing was shared with me, this accomplishment is so much more than small potatoes!

This appeared in the upper lefthand corner of the nameplate.