National Newspaper Week: Why we do what we do

There's certainly self-interest in a newspaper promoting literacy and education. Without readers, who would buy our paper?

It speaks to the third part of my grandfather Hosea Paddock's motto: “Our aim: To fear God, tell the truth, and make money.”

But it's certainly more than that. It's also the underpinning of why we do what we do: our responsibility to the community.

When Hosea spoke of God and truth, I think he spoke about respect. It was a respect for our world and community, and what is in it. We strive to bring people together to appreciate what life entails, to learn from it, to celebrate it, and to help people live well together.

For us to do this requires a literate, educated audience. We hope that doing our journalism contributes to education in our community.

Like the old saying about journalists having “printer's ink in their blood,” at the Daily Herald there has also been chalk on our hands. Hosea started his adult life as a teacher.

To be able to afford to raise the family he wanted back then, Hosea turned to running a newspaper, first in one town and then another. The profession of journalism was a practical way to both make a living and do what he could to educate: he covered the ordinary goings-on in town, and also drew attention to things of importance he observed.

This was what journalists across the country and throughout the world have tried to do — to observe and report. Indeed, in the towns and suburbs around Chicago, the Herald family of professional staff members has stood up to address inequities and to promote causes that would make for better communities. Early on they editorially supported the growth and improvement of schools, park districts and local government. A school in Palatine was named after Stuart Paddock in recognition of such efforts.

Even in today's changing media environment, the commitment to education continues. An ongoing series highlights and acknowledges the best teachers and their techniques. We explore and report on school budgets and school performance. We now do it with video, also, for our website and mobile applications.

We've invited our readers to be more involved, too, by enabling them to more readily submit their perspectives — and even their own stories.

The company publishes a Spanish/English newspaper called Reflejos, and a business publication, The Business Ledger, that reach out to different segments and generations of the community. Our newspapers are used in classrooms as teaching tools.

We and the newspaper industry as a whole continue to change and adapt with different types of coverage for different kinds of audiences on different platforms.

But the goal is still like Hosea's — to respect the world in which we live, to do well at our jobs, and to generate the resources to pay for these efforts.