By LES HIGH

I was reminded last week that newspapers are the definitive historical documents for most rural communities. Unfortunately, it was a painful reminder.

In our regular Thursday news staff meeting, someone noted that a former cartoonist for the paper had gone through the bound editions of old News Reporters without permission and cut out large sections of movie ads for a book he compiled.

At one time, The News Reporter allowed people to browse through our bound editions, which date back to 1924, for research or to simply take a walk down memory lane. We noticed over a period of time, however, that some people were tearing out entire pages or ripping out what they were looking for, so visiting the “morgue” (the place where old newspapers go to rest in peace) is no longer open to the public.

Fortunately, Columbus County Library has microfilmed every edition from 1924 through 2005 and has them on file and partially cross-referenced at the Carolyn T. High Memorial Library in Whiteville.

These are invaluable because rural counties like ours don’t have the funds to create historical collections.

It’s disappointing that the former cartoonist and others were selfish enough to rob the newspaper and its readers of the contents of those pages.

I thought of all the weddings, obituaries, photos of kindergarten classes, birth announcements, ball scores and mom-and-pop advertisements that will never be seen because the clippings are gone forever.

Written histories, such as those provided by newspapers, are essential. Most people can give an accurate depiction of events or of friends or loved ones for two to three generations at most. When this information is in the community newspaper, however, it is documented and available forever.

That’s why “refrigerator journalism” is the backbone of the community newspaper.

What is refrigerator journalism? It is the photo of the baseball team or the birth announcement that goes up on Grandma’s and Grandpa’s refrigerator, a piece of family history frozen in time for all who enter the kitchen to see.

Not everyone has a high-profile job or is a high school sports star, but making the honor roll posted every six weeks in The News Reporter, or winning an essay contest is just as important to them and their families. Refrigerator journalism is one reason why the major dailies are losing circulation and community papers are gaining.

Going back through the bound editions or microfilm at the library is a treat. They give a genuine snapshot of what life was back in (name the year).

I love the elegant, flowery style with which stories were penned. The author more often than not was a community correspondent who was paid by the inch.

Take this front-page jewel from a random edition I chose from the morgue this week, the Aug. 17, 1939 News Reporter: “Whiteville’s tobacco market, the leading market in the Border Belt, is outselling any other market on the Border Belt and is sending thousands of satisfied farmers from the two Carolinas home to shout the praises of unexcelled service, the absence of friction, dissatisfaction and long, hot waits, that is what is found on the Whiteville market.”

Obituaries were imaginative and extolling. An obituary from the Aug. 21, 1939 edition, which ran under the headline, “Whiteville Lady Called to Reward,” reads: “Mrs. Flora Anne Baldwin, 87, beloved woman of Whiteville, died at her home yesterday at 6:30 p.m. She had been suffering with the infirmities of age and complications of diseases for several weeks, but prior to that, she had been unusually active for her age.”

The ads were simple but effective. The “mules for sale” ads are the best.

The old newspapers remind us of how Columbus County society has evolved over time.

They also remind us of a simpler lifestyle that existed before television and interstates. These times may seem long gone to most of us, but it’s there for all to see, right there in The News Reporter.

The movie ads and whatever else has been torn from those old newspapers are lost forever, but there’s a silver lining behind it.

We lamented the loss at the staff meeting, but at the same time, it hit home our responsibility for being the keeper of history in the county.

Mark Gilchrist is now working on a project to digitize the thousands of old photos that are crammed into crumbling files in a dusty closet at the paper. Fuller Royal and Bob High are working to digitize the hundreds of photos taken by Mabel Prevatte from 1910 through the 70s.

We have also decided to move forward with pagination of the paper over the next few months. Pagination is the process by which all pages are put together digitally, never touching paper.

Through pagination, the entire paper can be put on our website at whiteville.com. Not a week passes that someone doesn’t email us asking how to access our archives on the Internet. We have some archives at whiteville.com, but they’re only from recent editions and they are not cross-referenced.

One day, viewers of our website, which now average 1,500 a day, will not only be able to read the paper on line, but all future News Reporters will be saved and cross-referenced.

So Jerry, if you read this, wherever you are, we’d be mighty obliged if you’d return those movie ads.

In the meantime, we’ll try to do a better job remembering how important reporting the news is, not only for the present, but for history as well.

•••

I want to share with readers something from the Lance Armstrong article in the May 8 edition of Sports Illustrated. Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times, has committed the rest of his life to fighting cancer, a disease that nearly killed him 10 years ago.

Relay for Life in April made this article particularly meaningful and gives food for thought.

SI writer Austin Murphy reported that Armstrong recently approached the Bush Administration for an extra $1 billion in the 2007 budget to bolster cancer research. The request was denied.

Said Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter’s former chief of staff and a four-time cancer survivor who serves on the Lance Armstrong Foundation board: “Almost half the people alive today will have cancer in their lifetimes,” he told Murphy. “That’s an epidemic.

“Ask the American people, ‘What’s your greatest fear?’ It’s not terrorism. It’s not crime. It’s cancer.

“And what are we doing about it?” Jordan asks. “If you went back and added up all the budgets from the National Cancer Institute over the past three decades, we spent as much money on cancer as we spend in Iraq in nine months.”