What newspapers are like

 Being a newspaper editor in a small town is, as my grandfather would say, like unto this:

A prominent businessman calls you and says that he was arrested — unfairly, mind you — for driving under the influence of alcohol. He asks you to keep his name out of the paper.

You explain that you can’t do that.

In a big city, that would be the end of it. But in a small community, you will bump into this fellow at the grocery store. He will still be angry.

And so, in some small way, every day of your life is a challenge to stand for truth — or, if that’s too pretentious, it’s a challenge to stand for facts that can be verified. It’s not heroic. But then again, you can forget about the idea of ever doing something as mundane as buying tomatoes in peace.

Here’s William Allen White, the editor of The Emporia Gazette, again:

Boston people pick up their morning papers and read with shuddering horror of the crimes of their daily villain, yet read without that find thrill that we have when we hear that Al Ludorph is in jail again in Emporia. For we all know Al; we’ve ridden in his hack a score of times. And we take up our paper with the story of his frailties as readers who begin the narrative of an old friend’s adventures. …

In lists of wedding guests in our papers we know just what poor kin was remembered, and what was snubbed. We know when we read of a bankruptcy just which member of the firm or family brought it on, by extravagance or sloth.

• Source: William Allen White’s essay “The Country Newspaper” appeared in Harper’s in May 1916. I have it in Harper Essays, edited by Henry Seidel Canby; New York: Harper & Brother Publishers, 1927, pp. 235-45.