By Richard McGuire

Osoyoos Times

This week’s column marks my sign-off as editor of the Osoyoos Times and is probably the end of my career in newspapers.

I appreciate all the people who have sent kind words or have dropped by to wish me well as my life takes a new direction.

As I mentioned when I wrote here two weeks ago, I plan to remain in Osoyoos and continue to be part of this community. I am only leaving the Times.

I often reflect on how different journalism and newspapers were when I studied journalism in the 1970s and took my first newspaper job in Parry Sound, Ontario in 1980.

In my first year of journalism school, one of our first assignments was to read the book All the President’s Men, by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It was about the dogged investigative reporting these two did into the Watergate scandal that brought down corrupt and anti-democratic U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.

Today newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times continue that tradition with solid investigations into a different scandal and different corrupt U.S. president.

But unlike in the 1970s, the investigative work by these newspapers now faces a deluge of competition from online publications and social media – some reputable and a lot of it less so.

In 1984, I started a newspaper about the revolution in personal computing that was just getting underway. I became excited about the potential of online communications to deliver information, even if in those days the speed of 300 or 1200 bps was glacially slow and was over dial-up phone lines.

I imagined a world where people would be able to customize the news they read to their own interests and receive it instantly at their fingertips.

Today that world is here and I’m not sure that it’s always good for journalism or for an informed public.

The evolution of news to the internet has led to an environment where the emphasis is on speed rather than accuracy or depth.

I often regret that many people aren’t more media literate, knowing how to distinguish between news from verified sources produced by professional journalists and rumour and inuendo spread by social media with no check on accuracy.

Just because something is in print, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Professional journalists do make mistakes, but the good ones strive for accuracy and correct those mistakes.

Many newspapers have disappeared in recent years as they see their advertising revenue sucked away by Facebook and Google, companies that spread rumours and false news, but produce no journalism of their own.

Some newspapers have found ways to adapt. And some online publications have produced quality work.

I worry though that with media under attack in all directions, an important pillar of democracy is at risk.

Thanks to my colleagues who have helped to make the Osoyoos Times an enjoyable place to work these past six years and thanks especially to the Osoyoos community.