My newspaper died--I

I had the "stuffing" knocked out of me.

Our last issue--address label to our son Vance, a student at Lubbock Christian

So much so that it's taken me this long to overcome avoiding writing about it.
I'm still recovering, as a matter of fact, after learning of the death of "my" paper, the Waurika News-Democrat at the first of this month.
I was surprised that after all these years--29 to the month after we sold it--I was so raw for my 12 years there.
John Dunn's poetry comes to mind: "No man is an island…any man's death diminishes
me." Any newspaper's death does the same.   I am always sad when a newspaper fails, and I know what a paper means to a town. But this made it very personal.

Clark, with the Don Morrison School of Journalism

The notes and thoughts have been piling up, and it's helped that I wrote a little about it in The Oklahoma Publisher this month. And now  folks in Waurika have started a new newspaper, The Waurika News Journal. It's backed by people I have know a long time, and the editor, Curtis Plant, graduated with my son Travis.
Curtis asked me to write a monthly column for them, and so I put one together, named "Coffee with Clark," from this blog, and  the descendant of my long ago column "Trail  Talk." It appeared this week, 29 years after I quit writing the other one.

That got me started, breaking the logjam of emotions and thoughts. I've also heard from old newspaper friends like Ray Lokey in Tishomingo, Gloria Trotter at Tecumseh,  Ken Chaffin of Healdton and Barbara Walter at Hennessey, Nell Largent of Waurika and others. A weekly newspaper guy in Minnesota wrote about it, and changing my old opinion about broadcast news, the old and new paper even made the television evening news twice on KSWO.
So my excuses are past, the roadblock has been removed.
I go back to Waurika every Mother's Day and plant flowers at Mom's grave, and then drive down those red brick streets, past the old paper office, through the neighborhoods, remembering raising a family there. It can be depressing, as the town has dwindled some. More telling are all the names I know on gravestones in the cemetery.

We gave these away as subscription promotions. 

Still, I want to share some of those memories...they are so much a part of who I am. In fact, those dozen years in Waurika may have been more formative in my life than any since, including raising four wonderful children. That's where I graduated from the Don Morrison school of journalism. Waurika is the closest I have to a home town, having grown up in a city.
Those thoughts and images are brewing in my coffee pot and in future posts. Ironically, when talking about this blog--billed above as an old-fashioned newspaper column, a good friend said to me once, "You've got your newspaper back."
Lots of stories to come--backshops, cut and paste, darkrooms, selling advertising, and more--a salute to the Waurika News-Democrat, the town's oldest business.

Fracking and water

"Much obliged" to my friend and newspaper publisher Ray Lokey of Tishomingo for this comment on Facebook, and to blog friend Ron Rabenold in Pennsylvania, for more takes on the fracking issue:  (Ray's paper, the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, has been in the forefront of dealing with threats to the local water quality and supply)
Ron's Comment: Ronald Rabenold I challenged the accepted status quo in regard to fracking in our state when I ran for State House last year...Private Corporations are running amok...I feel their right to swing their fist extends beyond the tip of my nose....

Ray's Take:  Ray Lokey Terry, I discovered this link over the weekend http://fracfocus.org/which has a wealth of information, including regs for Oklahoma. Greatest concern here remains groundwater contamination of the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer, although to my knowledge no fracking is currently going on within its boundaries. While fracfocus.org shows drilling well locations, when it comes to earthquakes, I am more interested in disposal or injection well locations which I have been unable to find thus far (although they may be there; just haven't found them yet). While I maintain a healthy skepticism, I am somewhat amazed at the number of oil and gas wells across the state and how few problems have been encountered so far.

Home | FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry

fracfocus.org

FracFocus is a hydraulic fracturing chemical registry website designed to provide information about chemicals used in the HF of oil and gas wells.