Today marks the 140th anniversary of the Great Bend Tribune. It also comes close to marking my 14th year as the fine publication’s editor.

That means I’ve been at this desk for one 10th of the paper’s storied existence. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting myself on the same shelf as the Townsleys or the Fairbanks who guided the Tribune through the golden era of print journalism. In fact, the onus of what these past great wordsmiths have done weighs heavy on me and colors just about every decision I make from this chair.

I merely bring this up because it is just another signal that I am getting older.

On my wall hang two items. 

One is a print featuring an old-time editor (he could be from the Trib) hunched over a manual typewriter. There is a pot of coffee on a pot-belly stove and an oil lamp illuminating a cluttered office littered with papers and other tools of the trade.

The other is a framed aluminum plate featuring the image of the very first Inland Tribune’s front and back pages. There are no photos, no images of any kind. There are just lots of words, column after column of words.

Now, these are not the type of stories we are used to seeing in today’s newspapers. Some are newsy. Some are more for amusement. Some offer wit, wisdom and enlightenment.

These are shear poetry. They were written at a time when how something was written was as important, if not more important, than the subject of the article itself.

Perhaps facts got overlooked, or just ignored, for the sake of the prose. 

We must remember this was a time when the printed word was the only form of mass communication. A town wasn’t a town unless it had a school, saloon, stable and a newspaper, or some combination of these.

The newspaper was the bedrock of the frontier community, the connection with civilization. There were no televisions, radios, computers, smart phones or tablets.

People read veraciously. They devoured the words printed on these pages as though they were a food group of their own necessary for survival.

So, when someone brought a printing press to town, it was a big deal.

Is that the case today,are we any better off or better informed? There is a hung jury.

When I started in this business 35 years ago, we used film, pica poles, proportion wheels and utility knives. I typed stories on an IBM Selectric, developed pictures in a darkroom, and cut and pasted my layouts.

But, the minute I start to regale young journalists with the tales of working in the Dark Ages, I hark back to that editor in the picture in my office. I realize I have always had electricity and never had to deal with molten lead. 

Now, even we journalists who once wielded grease pencils must cope with the ever-evolving newspaper landscape. Anymore, we are the producers of multi-media content for the internet, Facebook and Twitter.

But, despite all of this, newspapers remain important, perhaps even more so today. Most papers have the largest, most experienced news-gathering teams in their communities. 

The news staff’s job is to, well, report news, be it in print, online or elsewhere. These are news people first, public personalities second.

Sure papers have to make a buck to keep the lights on, but they have access to printing presses, as well as the digital universe. They are poised to continue to be the ultimate source of fact-based information, information that is often cited by other media outlets.

Also, as I look at the print on the wall, I realize something else hasn’t changed in 140 years. Desks.

A photo of the Tribune editor from 1956 shows a messy desk. I have a messy desk. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are items at the bottom of stacks of paper on my desk today that were there in the 50s.

Anyway, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I would like to think that 140 years from now, some future editor of the Tribune will sit at a desk, scribbling notes. But, what this futures holds for journalism and what technology will be around then are topics for science fiction.

One thing is certain. Whether our species lives in caves, reads newspapers or surfs the net, there will always be the need to tell stories and these stories will have to be disseminated in some fashion.

Long live the power of the written word.

Dale Hogg is the managing editor of the Great Bend Tribune. He can be reached at dhogg@gbtribune.com.