Letter: The sum total of our world

"They (the readers of the Daily Herald) want to know about important controversies or alarming crimes and disasters, but they don't want to feel like that is the sum total of their world." Daily Herald columnist Jim Slusher wrote these words for a Dec. 1 piece regarding the benefits of publishing "good news" articles.

I was mainly fascinated by his reference to the Grit newspaper published in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Slusher wrote that Grit stands as one example of a publication that emphasized good news in its national edition. In the early 1970s, when I was attending college, I worked for Grit as a summer reporter. The "good news" stories published in Grit were inspirational stories of Americana. The paper was read mainly by Americans who lived in the nation's small towns and rural areas.

Grit's publisher also published a regional (and more traditional) newspaper for north central Pennsylvania every Sunday. One of my favorite stories of those that I wrote resulted from an interview I had with a local farmer who decided to switch his fields so he could grow all his crops organically, a pretty unusual story at that time.

Some might think that "good news" newspapers can't survive in America. But Grit lasted for more than a century before being purchased by a Kansas publisher in the early 1990s. At one time, 1.5 million Americans subscribed to the paper.

I will forever be grateful to Grit. It helped me walk in the shoes of my rural and small town neighbors. As a resident of metro Chicago, those small town roots play a huge role in the sum total of my life.

William A. Decker

Des Plaines