All of the time I was growing up a weekday ritual was going to Gum Mercantile in the heart of downtown Newtonia every afternoon after school to await the arrival of the Neosho Daily News.
It was a ritual that was passed down from generation to generation. The older men sat around the wood stove in the back of the store, discussing politics and the weather, while the kids whose parents were at work would wait in front of the store and read through the comic books.
For years, it was a brown, four-door vehicle that appeared to have made it through both world wars that brought the paper sometime between 4 and 4:30, except on Wednesdays when it had grocery advertising inserts and arrived about a half hour to 45 minutes late.
For years, it was a brown, four-door vehicle that appeared to have made it through both world wars that brought the paper sometime between 4 and 4:30, except on Wednesdays when it had grocery advertising inserts and arrived about a half hour to 45 minutes late.
The bundle of papers was handed to Vernie Browning, the postmaster, who put them in the boxes. I opened Box 45, removed the Daily, bought a Dr. Pepper and sat on the front sidewalk of the store reading it from cover to cover.
Though I was interested in the page one stories, my favorite parts of the paper were the sports pages, which had the last night baseball stories that you couldn't get in the morning Joplin Globe, the comics, especially Peanuts, and the Washington Merry Go Round column by investigative reporters Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson.
Great times, still as vivid in my mind as if they happened yesterday.
Gum Mercantile is just a memory, the building the only evidence of the social hub of generations past. Charles Schultz, the cartoonist who drew Peanuts, is no longer with us and the Washington Merry Go Round came to a halt long ago, the corruption continuing but with no Pearson or Anderson to bring it to light.
Next month, the Neosho Daily News, a fixture for generations in the yards and mailboxes of Newton County, will breathe its last.
The name will still exist but the definition of daily will be twisted like a pretzel so Gatehouse Media doesn't have to foot the bill to change its stationery.
If you believe Gatehouse Media's regional publisher Jamey Honeycutt, the company's decision to cut the Daily from five editions a week to two beginning next month is going to be greatest thing for Neosho since Dog N Suds opened.
"We had to determine what we do better than anyone and that was cover local news," Honeycutt said in a top-of-page-one story in Sunday's Neosho Daily News. He made it sound as if two newspapers were going to magically enable the Daily (it will still be called the Daily because it will be updated online) to increase its news output. That can't happen unless Gatehouse is willing to invest money in its product and that is something the company does not intend to do.
That's not the picture Honeycutt paints, however.
"When your print edition comes on Tuesday and the weekend, it will be a thick edition, focused exclusively on local news, sports, and advertising."
Later in that same paragraph, Honeycutt said he hopes this will make the Neosho Daily News appointment reading.
Certainly that will be true if your appointment is at a dentist's office and your only choices are the new thicker Neosho Daily News and a year-old copy of Ladies Home Journal.
The article continues, "No other news agency in the area focuses on Neosho and Newton County like the Daily News and the Daily News takes it's (sic) responsibility seriously."
No, it doesn't.
No one in the corporate offices of Gatehouse Media cares one bit about the people of Neosho or Newton County, any more than they care about the people of Carthage whose venerated newspaper is being cut to once-a-week publication, or the people of Miami, whose newspaper is also being cut to two editions per week.
Today's Daily is not the Daily that Anne and Ken Cope published and edited. It is not the Daily of Howard Bush, Harlan Stark, Bill Ball, or my old friend and baseball teammate Dean Keeling.
While good people still work at the Daily, Gatehouse Media, which continues to buy newspapers and then shred them until they are nearly non-existent, has no concept of community service, no idea of what newspapers are supposed to be.
Gatehouse banks on the idea that the community has a loyalty to its hometown newspaper, demanding that loyalty without ever showing any loyalty of its own.
Thankfully, former Daily Publisher Randy Cope is still alive, or he would be rolling in his grave.
