TheWordWire.com: Don't Be So Hard On The Beaver Press

Don't Be So Hard On The Beaver Press

I had to tell Rufus not to be so hard on The Beaver Press.

"Please don't write that in your blog," he said.

"Well quit poking at it then," I told him. "It's a fine piece of journalism."

He peered at me over the top of the newspaper. "Uh-huh, I know. You're a big fan."

It's true. I am.

The first leg of our Utah adventure took us north on I-15 though Beaver. I've mentioned before that I have an obsession with small town newspapers — I have to stop for a Beaver Press whenever I go through this town.

Rufus' criticisms are not without warrant. There are too few pages and whole articles are printed with barely legible fading ink. There are three houses, a car and a horse for sale in the classifieds, and four proud advertisers featured in display ads. That's not much to support an editorial staff — it's OK that the content is thin.

Last week's paper mentioned nothing of Obama's big health care speech, and I'll bet next week's won't cover his off-the-record opinion of Kanye West. But what is printed and legible has value. If we hadn't stopped to get The Beaver Press, I would never have known — We missed the ever-popular Ms. Beaver Contest by only two days.

Ms. Beaver. Turns out that's not as redundant as it sounds. Because the title holder is a man.

I can't tell you who won because he's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. For 34 years, friends of AA founder, Bill W. have congregated in Beaver for a Labor Day weekend "campvention." The pageant precedes the "Boozeville Bombers" variety and talent show.

"I remember when I moved to Beaver and saw all these signs and people in town. I asked my neighbor lady. She said there was a gang of drunks who invaded our town. Pretty scary!" wrote the unnamed author of the front-page story. (S)He went on to explain how this first impression was wrong. "The Great Outdoor Beaver Meeting" as the event has come to be known, is all about recovery.

That's a good thing. A very good thing.

So don't be so hard on The Beaver Press or any town crier of equal size. There's something noteworthy wherever you go — a story to be told from every town. Sometimes all you have to do is open the paper to find it.