Veteran journalist gives his answer as to ‘Why the Royal Examiner?’

Journalist Malcolm Barr (before he was a Sr.) and his at-the-time, state-of-the-art manual typewriter — or is that a Teletype machine, Mal?

Why an online news service in Front Royal when there are three newspapers serving the area; and why are you contributing to its local news report, have been questions most frequently asked of me since I signed on to the Royal Examiner last fall.

Last week, on Friday, one of those print newspapers answered the question: it headlined that the venerable New York Times was, in common with newspapers throughout the nation, reported to be losing circulation and money with its daily print edition but “racking up digital customers” by the thousands.  Meanwhile, the equally venerable news service, The Associated Press, which reported on the Times’ significant reduction in the print advertising business, last year announced scores of lay-offs of news personnel. Some major and many smaller newspapers have closed down in recent years by the hundreds.

It should be no surprise that millennials don’t read newspapers.  Like my own 32-year-old son, their news comes through their I-Phones and computers, and perhaps to a lesser extent through television that they may view over the older folks’ shoulders.

Oh yes, President Donald Trump in his wisdom, called he Times a “failing” paper during his election campaign – and in this case he appears to be correct.

And why am I, whose journalism career spans almost seven decades, contributing to an online news report based in Front Royal?  For two reasons:

1. I live here, and I admire Mike McCool’s fortitude in launching a new media outlet in face of considerable local competition;
2. At my advanced age, I wanted to close a circle that began in 1949 on a prosperous British weekly “news sheet”; having survived the onslaught of television news in 1960s America; and now report for a new generation of media that is by all indications, the wave of the future.

As the long era of print media recedes, online news will take hold and do the job we old time journalists have been doing in ink on paper for years – preserving our democracy by holding to account all those who govern us, set and administer our laws by, not only reporting jobs well done, but revealing inconsistencies, flawed logic or hidden agendas in the conduct of government, business and industry.

That is not to say that the “printed” word will not still be our communications currency for the most part; however, it will now be delivered differently.

I want to say, when I turn in my keypad – just as over the decades I retired, first my pen and ink, then my manual and electric typewriters and tape recorders – that I was part of them all, all the aspects of information gathering and dissemination that developed during my time on this earth, culminating it would seem with this online news report.

I salute Mike McCool for his foresight in taking the Northern Shenandoah Valley a step forward in the business of bringing the news to future generations, thereby providing a bulwark against the demagogues who seek to rule us and other nations of the world today and in the future.

(Malcolm Barr chose a journalism career at age 9. He entered the profession as a “cub” reporter in 1949 in the north of England following graduation from grammar school at age 16, leaving home to do so.  Post-war, he began three years mandatory service in the Royal Air Force at age 18, editing his command magazine the final year.  At 21, he was sports editor of a south coast bi-weekly; at 22 sports editor of a county weekly before emigrating to Western Canada where he worked first for a weekly newspaper, then a small town daily, then for Canada’s second largest morning newspaper in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Returning to the UK in 1961, he worked for his hometown evening newspaper before landing in Honolulu and taking a reporting job at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. In 1962, he was a mid-Pacific correspondent for The Associated Press, the world’s largest wire service, and later as editor and AP correspondent covering the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.  From 1971 – 1996, he served in the U.S. Senate as a press secretary; and in three government departments (Labor, Justice and Commerce) as public affairs director or officer.  In 2002, he and his family moved to Front Royal where he has been a contributing writer for all three local newspapers, and now performs the same task, at age 83, for the Royal Examiner.  It may be noted that only two of all the newspapers Barr represented over the years still survive.)