My newspaper roots, or newspaper routes, go back to when I was about 7 years old. The town of Maddock, North Dakota had a hometown newspaper, The Standard, but it was not delivered by carriers, instead it came in the mail. We once did a tour of the Maddock Post Office and Postmaster Irv Pritchard explained that it was easier to mark the boxes that did not receive The Standard in the mail. If they weren’t marked, they received the paper.

I remember that once every year The Standard delivered a newspaper to every kid in school to take home and read. It was great public relations for the newspaper and every kid held on to that paper and took it home. It was kind of like gold. Even though we had received that paper in our post office box, this paper was ours, and on the front page was a photo of the paper being printed and a story about National Newspaper week.

For those too young to remember a hometown newspaper, it was a bit of a newspaper, and a lot of a gossip paper, as my Dad used to say. Each entity in the county, whether it be a local township, a non-profit organization like the Kiwanis club or the Boy Scouts, or even a church would have a representative who wrote and article. And perhaps that is where the moniker of “gossip paper” came from. It was a who visited who, or where Mr. & Mrs. traveled for their vacation, and of course the local hospital would have admissions and discharges. That was the content of The Maddock Standard and every other small town paper.

I am going to date myself a bit, as if my articles haven’t already done that, and talk about printing the paper. Each page had to be type set, and that is where my brother and I started our newspaper careers. If you think of each letter in a word, it had to be place in order on a rack. If you wanted to say, “Maddock Wins!”, that is how you would type set it. (space) M-a-d-d-o-c-k (space) W (note: capital W)-i-n-s-! (space). Headlines took larger letters, and you really needed to look at all of those letters to find the exclamation point. There weren’t a lot of exclamation points, so if you couldn’t find one the headline didn’t include an exclamation point, it was just that simple.

The closest game I can equate typesetting to is Scrabble, except you had to place words in several lines. Yep, it took forever to typeset an article…and then you had to carry it to the editors’ desk. It was kind of like carrying a dozen eggs and hoping not to drop them. Everyone, and I mean everyone would eventually drop a rack of typesetting, and there went your work all over the floor. No choice, start again.

When I was a bit older we had a fortunate stroke of luck. The Minneapolis Tribune and the Fargo Forum both wanted to deliver Sunday papers to the small town of Maddock. It took a train, a truck and several bikes to get the Sunday papers delivered. If the train was late getting to a larger town about 40 miles away, the paper was late getting delivered to Maddock and thus folks didn’t get their Sunday morning paper until Sunday evening, or in worst case scenario Monday morning…or later.

I would have to deliver about 45 papers for both the Forum and the Tribune, and at some point I would stop and rest on someone’s front step and at least read the headlines of each section. The Sunday papers had at least 4 sections plus the comics. The sections would come separate and we had to assemble the papers at home before we headed out on our routes.

So why I am I taking you on a trip down memory lane. Well for no other reason than to explain why the Northern Sentry continues to exist and has even grown in popularity. Our journey is a bit different, but still a pretty well-oiled process. By Monday at Noon, we like to have most of our content to our graphics editor, Nikki. That gives Nikki, albeit she starts thinking about the current edition at least a week in advance, about a day to graphically (no type setting any more) compose each section of the Northern Sentry.

Her unwavering goal it to compose the paper and get it out to those of us who proof the paper by mid-Tuesday afternoon. And from there, well we all proof the paper to the best of our ability and get Nikki any changes. By Wednesday at Noon, we have to send the completed paper to Garrison, North Dakota, where it is printed on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday morning the paper is assembled and goes by courier to Minot and the Minot Air Force base. A majority of the paper is hand delivered, whether it be one paper or a bundle of papers, to each of our locations. We still have carriers delivering to each home in the residential areas of the Minot AFB, and sometimes they endure some pretty extreme conditions.

A local small town paper editor who coached me along my journalism path told me that in order to be good at the newspaper business, you had to have ink running in your veins. I’ve never forgotten that statement, and to be very honest, the Northern Sentry we deliver today is a bit of the old and a bit of the new.

Old…there will never be a replacement for local journalists covering local stories, there just won’t. New…but we now have access to a myriad of stories that are of interest to our readers. We use them when we can, and when we have space.

There are those of you who read the Northern Sentry cover to cover, every week, and there are those who read the Northern Sentry sporadically, and finally there are those who pick it up once in a while. But as we prepare to print each edition of the Northern Sentry our promise to try and make it as much of a hometown newspaper as we can. And that of course, is what is most important.

Looking Around
I would certainly be remiss not to mention the other local North Dakota ski areas that are just as happy to treat you to a great time on the slopes. There is Huff Hills in Bismarck, about a 2 hour drive, and Frost Fire Park in Walhalla. Looking for a daycation. Either is a great family outing.

Today’s Chuckle
You know you’ve reached middle age when the only time you want to live life in the fast lane is at the grocery store.