Our View: Newspaper week

This week, newspapers across the country are celebrating National Newspaper Week.

While we at The Green River Star may not be doing anything special other than running this editorial and an editorial cartoon, we still feel it’s important enough to share with our faithful readers.

This year, National Newspaper Week is officially being recognized from Oct. 6-12. The 79th annual National Newspaper Week is a recognition of the service newspapers and its employees across the country provide and is sponsored by Newspaper Association Managers.

National Newspaper Week raises awareness about our five First Amendment freedoms, which are outlined in the U.S. Constitution: freedom of the press, speech, religion, petition and assembly. Newspapers help promote and protect these freedoms by the stories written every week.

We believe these freedoms are sometimes taken for granted in our busy everyday lives, which why it is so important for newspapers to continue to be watchdogs over what’s happening with the government. Often times, a newspaper is the first media outlet to respond when they believe government officials have overstepped their bounds. As journalists, we work to ensure the government process is transparent and the community’s best interests are accounted for.

We can’t count the amount of times we’ve been asked to look up old articles and legals to see what really was said at meeting. The legals we run in our paper act as historical documents to what was happening at a specific moment in time in a certain place. Time and time again we go to them to see what action was taken on a certain issue by the Green River City Council or the Sweetwater County Commission. These legals are so important to ensuring government transparency as motions and discussions prior to the motions are included in them.

It doesn’t matter if the newspaper is one of biggest dailies in the country with hundreds of employees working for it or a very small weekly where only two people are putting out the entire paper, the outcome is the same: providing unbiased, factual and trustworthy information that readers can rely on day after day or week after week.

Often times, in a small community, the newspaper is the only place residents can get local information. However, it’s also a place for residents to share their thoughts and ideas on where they would like to see the community go, from how the sixth-penny tax should be spent to whether or not the city should cull deer. Over the years, the opinion pages have been filled with residents’ letters to the editor about various issues. It gives these residents a way to exercise their freedom of speech by placing a letter in the local paper.

Each week, we work hard to cover events and write as many news, sports, people and feature stories as we can to provide our readers with a wide variety of coverage.

We also make sure to provide residents with the opportunity to take a look back in time with our archive’s page and inform residents about those who passed away or were arrested.

So, whether you’re an avid Green River Wolves’ fan, someone watching the City Council like a hawk or a parent looking for their child’s picture in the paper, we’re proud to provide you with what you expect in The Green River Star.