Still many good reasons to read all about it

Hollywood has remade The Day the Earth Stood Still , and though I haven't seen it I did come across the original on TV. It was first shown in theaters in 1951 and has been talked about ever since.

You remember the plot: A spaceship lands on the Mall in Washington, D.C. An anxious Army wounds the alien visitor Klaatu, who had come to help Earthlings. He escapes and tries to convince all nations that if they keep meddling with atomic weapons -- this was during the Cold War -- the advanced planets would have to bulldoze Earth.

While watching the old film, I noticed something I had missed in previous viewings. Surrounding the soldiers who surround the spaceship is a mob of rubberneckers. These civilians have been there ever since the landing, watching and listening to everything that has gone on.

Suddenly, a paperboy dashes up with the latest edition;

"Extra! Extra! Spaceman eludes police! Army put in charge! Read all about it! Read all about it!"

Those newspapers sell out faster than cell phones at Christmas. These bystanders have been eyewitnesses to history, you understand, but they felt they had to read their daily newspaper to get the whole story.

That makes sense. Most people are "civilians" who benefit from seeing the world around them in print. Though they have eyes and ears of their own, they depend on journalists to collate the events into understandable stories, photos and editorials.

Readers know that journalists are trained to assemble the news into a form made digestible through collective eons of practice. They want to read what the experts have to say through interviews, to look at pictures that tell stories of their own. They trust the reporters and editors to keep the writing unbiased, and the editorial pages to express opinions that help them form their own conclusions.

That goes not only for the news out of Washington (whether spacemen or congressmen) but also for closer to home, where, especially lately, people need help in finding out what on Earth is going on.

Newspapers have fallen on hard times, not just because of the economy but also because many people don't like to, or can't, read, so they try to get their news from other sources.

Not me. When I pick up today's edition from the driveway, I know that I hold something worth much more than the selling price. I hold proof that many hard-working people have staked their jobs and reputations on their ability to pass along the news accurately in timely, readable form. I need a daily newspaper.

Apparently, so do many of you. After last month's presidential election, people lined up at newspaper offices nationwide to buy extra copies to keep forever. Our newspaper sold more copies than it ever had before in more than 200 years of covering wars, disasters, elections and local events.

The election was a one-time event, but it showed that newspapers don't fade away with each day's news; one of a paper's many functions is to serve as a permanent record. Whether readers save a clipping of a baby born, a child graduated, a couple married, a loved one deceased -- or a president elected -- we all want keepsakes to remind us of a day the Earth stood still.

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.