essay on if there were no newspaper

• Andhra Pradesh
• Chhattisgarh
• West Bengal
• Madhya Pradesh
• Maharashtra
• Jammu & Kashmir
• NCERT Books 2022-23
• NCERT Solutions
• NCERT Notes
• NCERT Exemplar Books
• NCERT Exemplar Solution
• States UT Book
• School Kits & Lab Manual
• NCERT Books 2021-22
• NCERT Books 2020-21
• NCERT Book 2019-2020
• NCERT Book 2015-2016
• RD Sharma Solution
• TS Grewal Solution
• TR Jain Solution
• Selina Solution
• Frank Solution
• ML Aggarwal Solution
• Lakhmir Singh and Manjit Kaur Solution
• I.E.Irodov solutions
• ICSE - Goyal Brothers Park
• ICSE - Dorothy M. Noronhe
• Sandeep Garg Textbook Solution
• Micheal Vaz Solution
• S.S. Krotov Solution
• Evergreen Science
• KC Sinha Solution
• ICSE - ISC Jayanti Sengupta, Oxford
• ICSE Focus on History
• ICSE GeoGraphy Voyage
• ICSE Hindi Solution
• ICSE Treasure Trove Solution
• Thomas & Finney Solution
• SL Loney Solution
• SB Mathur Solution
• P Bahadur Solution
• Narendra Awasthi Solution
• MS Chauhan Solution
• LA Sena Solution
• Integral Calculus Amit Agarwal Solution
• IA Maron Solution
• Hall & Knight Solution
• Errorless Solution
• Pradeep's KL Gogia Solution
• OP Tandon Solutions
• Sample Papers
• Previous Year Question Paper
• Value Based Questions
• CBSE Syllabus
• CBSE MCQs PDF
• Assertion & Reason
• New Revision Notes
• Revision Notes
• HOTS Question
• Marks Wise Question
• Toppers Answer Sheets
• Exam Paper Aalysis
• Concept Map
• CBSE Text Book
• Additional Practice Questions
• Vocational Book
• CBSE - Concept
• KVS NCERT CBSE Worksheets
• Formula Class Wise
• Formula Chapter Wise
• JEE Crash Course
• JEE Previous Year Paper
• Important Info
• JEE Mock Test
• JEE Sample Papers
• SRM-JEEE Mock Test
• VITEEE Mock Test
• BITSAT Mock Test
• Manipal Engineering Mock Test
• AP EAMCET Previous Year Paper
• COMEDK Previous Year Paper
• GUJCET Previous Year Paper
• KCET Previous Year Paper
• KEAM Previous Year Paper
• Manipal Previous Year Paper
• MHT CET Previous Year Paper
• WBJEE Previous Year Paper
• AMU Previous Year Paper
• TS EAMCET Previous Year Paper
• SRM-JEEE Previous Year Paper
• VITEEE Previous Year Paper
• BITSAT Previous Year Paper
• UPSEE Previous Year Paper
• CGPET Previous Year Paper
• CUSAT Previous Year Paper
• AEEE Previous Year Paper
• Crash Course
• Previous Year Paper
• NCERT Based Short Notes
• NCERT Based Tests
• NEET Sample Paper
• Previous Year Papers
• Quantitative Aptitude
• Numerical Aptitude Data Interpretation
• General Knowledge
• Mathematics
• Agriculture
• Accountancy
• Business Studies
• Political science
• Enviromental Studies
• Mass Media Communication
• Teaching Aptitude
• NAVODAYA VIDYALAYA
• SAINIK SCHOOL (AISSEE)
• Mechanical Engineering
• Electrical Engineering
• Electronics & Communication Engineering
• Civil Engineering
• Computer Science Engineering
• CBSE Board News
• Scholarship Olympiad
• School Admissions
• Entrance Exams
• All Board Updates
• Miscellaneous
• State Wise Books
• Engineering Exam

671 If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes English (Handwritten Short & Revision Notes)

671. If there were no Newspaper is one of the most important chapters in English which every student should study if they want to score good marks in their examination. Keeping in mind, Selfstudys.com has decided to solve this issue of the students. 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes not only help the students to understand the concepts better but also boosts their confidence. 

671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes are created as per the latest pattern of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to ensure that the student covers each and every topic and does not miss any important topic. Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes are written in a well-detailed manner which clears every doubt of the students and helps them to score good marks in their examinations.

All the students are advised to study from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes on a weekly basis to create a strong foundation of all the topics and memorise them in a way so that you remember them for a longer period of time. 

About 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes PDF

All the students can have access to Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes at the official website of selfstudys i.e. selfstudys.com. 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes are created by the highly qualified subject matter experts who have their expertise in the field of education. 

Students can access 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes absolutely free of cost. These Notes are a success mantra for all the students who want to improve their marks and score well in their examinations. 

These Notes can be easily downloaded in the PDF Format and can be accessed 24×7. The Notes of Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper are also mobile-friendly. 

Students using 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes can also identify their strong and weak areas and can work on them to improve their scores. 

What Are 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes and Why Are They Famous Among the Students? 

Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes are important study materials which consist of the important definitions, HOTS (High Order Thinking Skills) questions, key points etc. Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper helps to increase the accuracy of the students and is completely free of cost. This makes 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes famous among the students. 

Our highly qualified subject matter experts at selfstudys who have their expertise in the educational industry have created 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. Also, they are familiar with the most common questions which often get repeated in the examinations. 

How to Download 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes? 

Downloading Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes is not a very difficult task if you are aware of the right steps. The steps to download 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes is as follows: 

• Visit the official website of selfstudys i.e. selfstudys.com.

• After going to the official website, you need to click on the three lines which you will see on the upper left side. After clicking on the three lines, you need to click on the ‘CBSE’ option. 
• After clicking on the ‘CBSE’ option, click on the option of ‘New Revision Notes’.

• After clicking on the option of ‘New Revision Notes’, you will be redirected on the page where you have to select the class and the subject for which you want to download the Notes.
• And you are done! Now you can access 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. 

What are the Benefits of 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes? 

There are numerous benefits of 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. Some of the most important of them includes:

• You will cover each and every topic: If you are studying from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes, it can be said that you will cover each and every topic and will not miss even a single topic. The subject matter experts at selfstudys have made sure to cover each topic in a well-explained manner. 
• Increases focus: 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes are written in a way which keeps the students interested in their studies which can increase focus. The students can go through Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes thoroughly to score good marks in their exams. 
• Easy Language: Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes are written in an easy to understand language to ensure that the students do not find any term difficult while studying them. As they are written in an easy language, the students will be able to memorise them fast. 
• Increases Learning Capacity: 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes not only boosts the confidence of the students but also increases the learning capacity of all the students. By this, they are able to memorise the concepts fast. This helps them to do effective preparation and score well in their examinations. 
• A great source of revision: One of the biggest benefits of 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes is that it can be a great source of revision. As these Notes consist of each and every piece of information, students reading them after completing their exam preparation will not only stick the information in their mind but will also remember them for a longer period of time. 

Revision Tips to Study from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes 

There are various revision tips which students should follow to study from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. Some of them are:

• Note down your mistakes: While studying from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes, it is advisable for all the students to make a list of their mistakes and then work on them. Students can improve their preparation level by noting down their mistakes and working on them.
• Practise Study Materials: All the students are advised to practise from the study materials for example: previous year question paper, Mock tests and more. By practising them regularly, a student gets to know about the pattern of the examination, weightage per question, marking scheme etc. 
• Blurting: Another great way which students can choose to do is by the blurting method. In this technique, a student has to read 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes repeatedly to memorise them. After following the blurting method, make sure that you test yourself by writing down the topics which you remembered so far during the revision time. 
• Take short breaks between your exam preparation: Students are always advised to take short breaks between their exam preparation as it will ensure effective learning. Taking short breaks while studying 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes also improves memory and recalling power. So, make sure to follow this revision tip while doing exam preparation. 
• Pomodoro Technique: Another important revision tip which is advisable for all the students is to follow the pomodoro technique as it helps to reduce distractions and improves the concentration of the students. This technique can be used by all the students to increase their accuracy and concentration when they are using 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. 

How to Prepare for Annual Exam from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes?

There are various tips which students should follow to prepare from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. The tips are:

• Start reading or rewriting your Notes: The first tip which students should follow is that they should start reading their 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes repeatedly. After reading, they can write them to stick in their memory and remember them for a longer period of time. There are also various ways which you can use to rewrite them.
• Start studying in advance: It is always advisable for all the students to start studying for their examinations in advance from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes. If they study at the last moment, they will not be able to study effectively and chances of getting stressed and anxious will also increase. Studying in advance also helps to create a strong base of each and every concept. 
• Always take food breaks in between your exam preparation: Students are advised to take short food breaks of 15-20 minutes in between their exam preparation to revive their energy levels and also to improve their memory. 
• Get a good night’s sleep: All the students are advised to get a good night’s sleep as it will help the students to improve their brain function which will automatically improve the learning power of all the students. 

What are the Advantages of Having 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes? 

There are various Advantages of Class 10 671. If there were no Newspaper Notes. Some of the most important of them are:

• Boost in Confidence: By studying from 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes, a student can boost their confidence as they will find out that they are aware of the majority of the topics and will do well in the final examinations. This will not only enhance their self-confidence but will also motivate them to do better in exams. 
• Forces the student to level up: 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes are written in a way which includes various HOTS (High Order Thinking Skills) questions which will force the students to think at a higher level. 
• Access to Detailed Explanations: The subject matter experts at selfstudys have created these Notes in a detailed way which will help the students to increase their conceptual knowledge and also build a strong foundation of all the concepts in their minds. 
• As per the latest syllabus: 671. If there were no Newspaper Class 10 Notes are created as per the latest syllabus to ensure that the student covers each and every topic and does not miss even a single topic. 
• Diagrammatically Explained Resources: Apart from the easy theoretical language which is used in explaining the students through the Notes, various diagrams, tables etc. are also used to help the students understand all the concepts in a better way. 
• Mobile Friendly: One of the biggest advantages of 671. If there were no Newspaper English Essay Class 10 Notes is that they can be easily accessed on mobile phones. One does not need a laptop or PC to access them. 

• NCERT Solutions for Class 12 Maths
• NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Maths
• CBSE Syllabus 2023-24
• Social Media Channels
• Login Customize Your Notification Preferences

One Last Step...

• Second click on the toggle icon

Provide prime members with unlimited access to all study materials in PDF format.

Allow prime members to attempt MCQ tests multiple times to enhance their learning and understanding.

Provide prime users with access to exclusive PDF study materials that are not available to regular users.

• Ethics & Leadership
• Fact-Checking
• Media Literacy
• The Craig Newmark Center
• Reporting & Editing
• Ethics & Trust
• Tech & Tools
• Business & Work
• Educators & Students
• Training Catalog
• Custom Teaching
• For ACES Members
• All Categories
• Broadcast & Visual Journalism
• Fact-Checking & Media Literacy
• In-newsroom
• Memphis, Tenn.
• Minneapolis, Minn.
• St. Petersburg, Fla.
• Washington, D.C.
• Poynter ACES Introductory Certificate in Editing
• Poynter ACES Intermediate Certificate in Editing
• Ethics & Trust Articles
• Get Ethics Advice
• Fact-Checking Articles
• International Fact-Checking Day
• Teen Fact-Checking Network
• International
• Media Literacy Training
• MediaWise Resources
• Ambassadors
• MediaWise in the News

Support responsible news and fact-based information today!

Here’s what a world without a free press looks like. Believe us — we know.

Editor’s note: Amanda Bennett is the director of Voice of America, part of the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting. Funded by Congress, VOA produces digital, TV and radio content in 47 languages distributed to affiliate stations around the globe. Journalists at VOA headquarters in Washington, D.C., work with a global network of correspondents and stringers to cover U.S. and international affairs. U.S. government officials are prohibited from interfering with the objective, independent reporting of news by VOA.

This piece was adapted from a speech she gave at the National Press Club in October 2019, when she was honored with the Fourth Estate Award. 

Sometimes, for a lifelong American journalist, worrying about threats to a free press feels a bit like a fish worrying about the oceans drying up.  For our entire careers — and for many of us, our entire lives — we’ve lived and worked so deeply inside a society with a free press we’ve forgotten, if we ever knew, just how extraordinary that is.

We worry about threats to a free press in our country — yet overwhelmingly we still write, speak, criticize and investigate corruption, bias, violence, prejudice and all sorts of wrongdoing and know that our work will often lead to action — and that action won’t be a jail term or torture.

A life truly without a free press?  It’s kind of hard to really imagine.

Yet, today from where I sit near the end of a very long journalism career,  I feel a little bit like George Bailey. Because every day I get to see something I wouldn’t ordinarily have ever been able to see: I can see what our country would be like — what the world would be like — if we didn’t have the First Amendment.  If we didn’t have the Fourth Estate. If we didn’t have journalists, and journalism. If we didn’t have the blessed privilege of living in a country with a First Amendment in a society that still takes it seriously.

Because these days I find myself in an extraordinary place, at a job I never expected to hold, at an organization I had almost forgotten existed, doing work I didn’t know needed to be done. I’m the Director of the Voice of America, the U.S. taxpayer-funded news organization that reaches more than 280 million people in more than 60 countries in 47 languages — on television, radio and all kinds of digital means that you know about — and many that you’ve never heard of.

I joined VOA after a long career at The Wall Street Journal, including a stint as Beijing bureau chief; as editor or managing editor for three regional papers — The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon; The Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader; and The Philadelphia Inquirer — and finally as the creator of a global investigative team at Bloomberg News.

I saw a lot in all those jobs, all around the world.  But I was always protected. We had a free press. The world that I see from this perch at VOA is a world that is less fair. Less caring of its citizens’ rights — often brutally so. In our country, we rightly care about the gap between rich and poor — yet in a world without a free press there is outright cruelty as despots seize a country’s assets as their own.

And just think what it is like to live in a world where the press isn’t just messy, unruly and increasingly polarized. Think of a world where you can believe nothing — nothing — of what you read, hear or see in your country’s media. Where every word is carefully calibrated to make you believe that up is down, right is left, bad is good, good is bad and — as they say — resistance is futile.

How do I know? Because a world without a free press is where my colleagues and I here at VOA live every day. You know those lists that Freedom House puts out every year of unfree countries? Well, count up roughly 50 or 60 countries from the bottom and there you have it: our audience. China. Russia. Iran. Turkey. North Korea.

Here’s what we do :  We broadcast all around the world the uncensored version of speeches. The unheard views of opposition parties.  The stories of disappeared teachers, politicians, journalists — sometimes even whole populations. And we also show the world America in all its greatness, but also its flaws and faults. We are as independent as all of the places I worked before and — as we say — we broadcast the First Amendment.

We do news. Current events. Talk shows. Women’s programs. Health programs. Tech programs. In Chinese, Bambara, Russian. Farsi. Lingala.  Hausa. Ukrainian. Tibetan. And 39 other languages, many of which I’ll bet you’ve never heard of. I know I hadn’t when I started working here.

In a huge part of the world — a bigger part than we can all bear to imagine — we ARE the free press. Not just that, we are also the very idea that a free press can even exist.

For a free press is nothing more than an idea.

Every day here at VOA, we ask people to put aside their fears and prejudices and do the best they can to honestly broadcast both the official line of dictatorships and that of those who oppose it.  We ask them to report fairly about people who may have been their family’s enemies for years, like asking journalists from Myanmar to ignore anger and taunts from relatives and friends back home to give the Rohingya a fair shake. Or to brave government displeasure all around the world by writing dispassionately about the opposition.

We ask them to do this even when it means a mysterious car parked outside their homes in China, or when they are hit by rubber bullets in Hong Kong. When even getting food and water is a struggle as it is in Venezuela. Even when they are pushed, shoved, detained, arrested — as our Tibetan reporters were recently in India. Even when a car bomb narrowly misses them in the Kurdish area of Syria and yes, sometimes … as in Somalia … even when it doesn’t.

We all talk about courageous journalism. Those of us in my generation grew up in Vietnam’s shadow. We saw class fighting class as cops and students clashed. Blacks fighting white, whites fighting blacks. Whole cities burned to the ground. Our country’s national guard turned against our own citizens. Our government riven with corruption and brought to its knees by lies, suspicion and malice. A pointless war that cost so many lives.

How many of us then and now have been practically driven into this business by idealism, by the desire to do courageous journalism? I know that I am just like most of you reading this: becoming a journalist because we wanted to make the world a better place. We built our lives and careers on exposing wrongdoing. And by doing that, over the decades we played — and continue to play – a big role in helping to keep our democracy astonishingly honest. Astonishingly free. Astonishingly dedicated to the concept that government should NOT be corrupt. That companies should make things that do what they say they will do and not hurt people. That businessmen and women and government officials in whom we place our trust should be held to account. That we are a country and a people ruled by laws and principles.

We practice idealistic, courageous journalism.

But really, for me there was no courage at all. It was all privilege.  It was a privilege for me to be able to spend my entire life squarely within the values I know we all cherish.  To know that I won’t meet the same fate that many of my now-colleagues faced back in their home countries. To be detained for my work.  Beaten. Tortured. Have my relatives rounded up or even murdered. My colleagues came here to work at VOA for the privilege of giving their own countries a taste of the privilege that we have enjoyed all our lives.

And the biggest privilege of all for me?

It isn’t a privilege at all.

It’s a right.

We who had that privilege of living our values owe it to those who come next to help ensure that they can too. And that means not just here in the U.S., but all over the world. Here at VOA we have the extraordinary right to do our work as any other journalists do their work, protected by laws that are taken very seriously by people inside and outside VOA’s newsrooms and studios.

Yet even here, the forces that threaten a free press both abroad and at home threaten our journalists, too. If people don’t think seriously about what it means to be almost the entire free press for a whole country, then no one will care if we are attacked, jailed or thrown out.  If people continue to believe that VOA is already just spouting propaganda, then no one will be there to care if some day it is forced to do so.

Amanda Bennett is the director of Voice of America.

How Poynter transformed a hands-on workshop into an email course

Lessons learned from an experiment in building a new journalism project

Opinion | Journalists at Columbia are leading the coverage of their campus

The Columbia Daily Spectator has expertly documented tense protests over the Israel-Hamas war inside and outside the campus.

Q&A: Mina Kimes on her run from acclaimed sportswriter to Emmy-nominated NFL Analyst

The ESPN star explains how she got over her fears (and the trolls) to get better at discussing the sport she loves

No, Morton Salt and other table salts do not contain sand and glass

Excessive consumption of salt can cause hypertension because of the sodium it contains — not because of glass in the salt

Opinion | Everyday sexism has no place in sports journalism

The conversation around Gregg Doyel’s comments to Caitlin Clark failed to address larger, systemic issues that could lead to better journalism

Start your day informed and inspired.

Get the Poynter newsletter that's right for you.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

What Happens When the News Is Gone?

By Charles Bethea

For a long time, the commissioners of Pollocksville, a town of three hundred or so people in the far eastern part of North Carolina, held their monthly public meetings in a century-old former train depot on Main Street, near the Trent River. In September, 2018, Hurricane Florence flooded the Trent; the water rose as high as ten feet downtown, severely damaging dozens of structures in Pollocksville. The train depot was nearly destroyed, along with town records that dated back to the nineteen-twenties.

The commissioners’ meetings are now held in a former pharmacy across the street from the Dollar General store. On a Tuesday evening in November, Pollocksville’s five town commissioners gathered there, sitting on a raised platform beneath fluorescent lights and an American flag, to which they and the seven residents who had come to the meeting—a typical number of attendees—pledged allegiance. Among the first orders of business was a proposed flood-damage ordinance, one of many responses to Florence that the board has considered in the past year. Jay Bender, who’s been the mayor of Pollocksville for nearly four decades, has a solid helmet of gray hair and a careful drawl. He asked if anyone in the audience would like to comment on it.

Alice Strayhorn, a hairdresser in her late sixties who has lived in Pollocksville most of her adult life, raised her hand. “This flood-damage-prevention order,” she said. “How are we supposed to know about that? You can’t make a comment on something you don’t know about.” Strayhorn’s low-lying home is often the first in town to flood during heavy storms; she had heard that there had been grants coming through to deal with flooding. (“That’s why I keep going to the meetings,” she told me later. “Seeing if there’s anything that comes up.”)

Sign Up Receive alerts about new stories in our exploration of democracy in America.

“That’s probably true,” Bender said. “But it was posted. It was advertised.”

“Posted where?” Strayhorn asked.

“In the newspaper,” Bender said, “and outside the office.”

Pollocksville is situated in Jones County, and most people would tell you that Jones County doesn’t have a newspaper. It used to have the Jones Post , a weekly founded in 1976. But that outlet has faded over a period of years, first becoming a regional insert delivered with other newspapers, and gradually ceasing to print much in the way of substantive local journalism. At this point, not even its publisher is quite willing to call it a paper. According to one estimate, the U.S. has lost one in four of its newspapers in the last fifteen years. The vast majority of those that have folded are weekly papers and other non-dailies. Around fifteen hundred American counties have just one paper, usually a weekly; another two hundred counties are without a newspaper altogether. These latter areas are what researchers call news deserts, and Jones County, one researcher told me, is a classic example. Bender had posted a notice about the ordinance. He had put it in the New Bern Sun Journal , which is based in a neighboring county. Few people in Pollocksville read it.

Alice Strayhorn stayed at the meeting for another ninety minutes, before leaving early. She spoke up just once more, to let the mayor know that his chair was at risk of toppling over. The ordinance passed a few minutes after she left, and the board moved on to other subjects: a sewer leak by the graveyard, the town’s Christmas lights, its “Welcome to Pollocksville” sign, a dead fox, and the fate of a long-abandoned 1999 Crown Victoria.

I caught up with Strayhorn outside. I wanted to know which newspaper she thought Bender had been referring to in his reply to her.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging, as rain began to fall. “I haven’t received any paper.” She told me that she’d already lost two cars to flooding and was worried that she’d lose her house.

I asked whether having a newspaper in town would make any difference to her.

“If I put the story in a paper, maybe the board would pay more attention to me,” she said. “I can’t even remember the last time we got a paper here. The news information is very scarce now. It’s not like it used to be. I don’t know what happened.”

Pollocksville is the oldest of three small towns in Jones County, which sits on five hundred square miles of flat land suited to growing cotton, tobacco, and soybeans. The county is shaped like a mounted boar’s head, facing west; Pollocksville sits in the middle of the neck. About ten thousand people live in the county, the same number that lived there a hundred years ago. Roughly sixty per cent of its residents are white, and roughly sixty per cent of its residents voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

In addition to the Sun Journal , a couple of other newspapers from neighboring counties trickle into Jones: the Kinston Free Press , from Lenoir County, and the Jacksonville Daily News , from Onslow County. But none of those papers has more than a couple hundred readers inside Jones County’s borders. All three are owned by the Gannett Company, which controls more than two hundred publications nationwide. Under Gannett’s watch, many have become “ghost papers,” emaciated versions of their former selves, hobbled by cost-cutting, barely able to cover their established beats.

Penny Abernathy, a professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina, told me that, twenty years ago, a state’s largest newspaper could be counted on to cover its rural areas. At its peak, in the nineteen-nineties, the Raleigh News & Observer had some two hundred and fifty newsroom employees, and it won a Pulitzer, in 1996, for its coverage of the hog industry in rural North Carolina. Now it’s down to around sixty staffers. “That means there are no longer the people that were roaming around in the past, doing stories that bound that region together,” Abernathy said. News ecosystems have become especially arid in poorer places with older residents who have less formal education than the average American. “The South tends to have lost more papers, and have more counties without newspapers, than any other place,” she said.

Pollocksville’s temporary town hall is at the southern end of Highway 17, the town’s main drag. The morning after the commissioners’ meeting, I went back there to talk to Mayor Bender. The Benders have lived in the area since the eighteenth century, when European settlers first came to the region and “built an agricultural economy centered around the ‘Southern Plantation,’ ” as the county’s Web site puts it. Bender attended Jones Central High School in the mid-sixties, a period of what he called “semi-integration.” He was in college by the time full integration arrived, in the fall of 1969, but his younger brother told him about the confrontations that ensued. “A private school opened here so white kids would have somewhere else to go,” he said. “And there was the start of what became a pretty good exodus by white kids into neighboring counties.” (A few years ago, a writer for the Kinston Free Press noted that, during this period—“the last high-water mark of the Klan in the area”—his paper “didn’t cover Klan events in Lenoir and Jones counties.”) At the time, Democrats controlled the state; Bender has been a registered Democrat since he was legally allowed to register for a party. I asked him if there were national issues that he felt strongly about. “I’d prefer to be seen above the fray,” he said. “I have strong leanings on certain things that each side says, but I don’t really want to talk about that.” I asked if he thought climate change had anything to do with the severity of Hurricane Florence. “You can talk about climate change all you want, but we had an unprecedented twenty-foot flood. I don’t know that there’s anybody out there that says that climate change caused or contributed to that.” He added, “I’m not going to say it.”

On the wall behind Bender at the temporary town hall was an aerial photograph of the damage done to the town by Florence, and we chatted for a while about storms and the news. Bender watches cable news and reads the New Bern Sun Journal on occasion, though with diminishing expectations. In Bender’s view, physical newspapers and books are doomed. “Other than a John Grisham,” he told me, “I haven’t bought a hardcover book in ages.” I brought up the moment the night before when he told Alice Strayhorn that a notice had run in the paper—one that few residents receive. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-eight years,” he said. “I don’t care what you do, there’s always going to be someone that shows up saying, ‘I didn’t know about this.’ Because people want to be spoon-fed. And I’ve also learned over the years that no matter how much you publicize, how much you print, how much you provide, most people—not all, but most—don’t read it.” One of his expressions, he told me, is “Most people don’t want to be confused with the facts.”

Bender liked the idea of having a local newspaper in Jones County again somehow. He was less keen on the prospect of investigative journalism. “I don’t know that I necessarily agree that it’s a newspaper’s job to be an investigative agency,” he said. “Now, if the reporter gets an anonymous tip, or someone calls in, ‘You all need to check out Jay Bender, who’s not doing this, that, and the other,’ then, O.K. But my feeling is, if someone is not doing anything right, why do you ask a newspaper to do it?” He went on, “You’re not going to throw somebody out. You have to wait for an election, unless you’re going to take them to court.”

He added, “I’m an open book, and my records are an open book. But I find it very frustrating—and, quite frankly, somewhat insulting—to spend my time or my staff’s time providing information to citizens or people or whatever, and, when push comes to shove and decisions have to be made or questions have to be raised, nobody knows what you’re talking about. Now, could a newspaper or a news entity help that? Perhaps, perhaps. I don’t know.”

The week before my first visit to Pollocksville, there had been an election. Three spots were open on the town board, and three people ran. One of them was Maria Robles, who moved to town a few years ago, when she took a job at Lenoir Community College, in Trenton, after two decades in the Air Force. “There’s nothing out there that says, ‘Hey, go out there and vote,’ ” Robles told me, describing her experience running for office. Once upon a time, that might have been the paper; eventually, it might be the Internet . But, while the county high school and a few local businesses have broadband, most Jones County residents have slow dial-up access or none at all. Not many people check the town’s Web site, which is updated infrequently anyway. But word of Robles’s candidacy got to Darrell Bell, who runs Bell’s Corner, an auto-repair shop on Main Street that he inherited from his father.

“I went to Bell’s Corner to have my car worked on, and Darrell was, like, ‘Hey, I heard that you’re running.’ And I’m, like, ‘I haven’t even told my husband or my parents—and my parents live right down the road.’ And he goes, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll talk to people.’ ” Twenty-five people voted; all but one voted for Robles. Now, she said, “If I want information out, I send it to Bell’s Corner. I also send it to the Filling Station”—a food pantry and a center for gossip—“and my contact at the post office, Dwayne. But that’s only for Pollocksville. If I needed to get information to Maysville”—a larger town elsewhere in Jones County—“I don’t know how yet.”

“She’s gonna learn a lot,” Nancy Barbee told me, when I relayed the story. Barbee is also on the town board. Her maiden name is Bender, and she’s probably a distant relation of the mayor, she said. She grew up in Pollocksville, and taught in Jones County public schools for three decades. When we met, she wore red reading glasses tucked into short dirty-blonde hair, and jewelry from India, a country she first visited on behalf of the Rotary Club, which she has worked with for years. Barbee had agreed to drive me around Jones County, to visit, as she put it, “some local hangouts where we get our news.” Bell’s Corner was the first spot on our itinerary.

Pollocksville was “a booming little place” in the fifties and sixties, when Barbee was growing up, she said. “Times change,” she added, driving through the barely beating heart of town. It’s still an agricultural area, but farming there is not as lucrative as it used to be. I asked Barbee to name the county’s biggest business. She thought for a minute. “Well, it used to be the school-supply company, but it closed down. There is a marine—what was it called? Like, a metal place that was sort of stuck back in the middle of nowhere.” Even Mayor Bender’s family business, a grocery store, had moved to a neighboring county.

When Florence hit, Barbee said, members of the media came from elsewhere to cover the storm. “We had CBS, NBC, BBC, all those major channels.” This helped with the initial recovery. “It certainly let people know all over the country and all over the world, ‘My God, look what happened here in this small little town,’ ” Barbee said, adding, “It’s harder for public officials to ignore things when they’re in the news.” Now, she went on, “we don’t have news reporting on a regular basis here to tell the ongoing story of the recovery, or to hold elected officials in check, or anything else.” Barbee praised the mayor for procuring grants to rebuild after Florence, but she had concerns about his use of some of these funds. “He took sixty-seven thousand dollars to clean that building out,” she said, referring to the old town hall, “without any board approval.” The mayor’s office was also in the former train depot. “That really perturbed us. A thousand dollars is one thing. But sixty-seven thousand is another. We may have used it for something different.” She added, “I’m not saying he’s doing anything illegal. But he tells you part of the story—the part he wants us to know.”

At Bell’s Corner, Darrell Bell, a man in his sixties with a mustache and a mischievous smile, sat behind a cluttered desk, feeding a piece of bread to an area dog. I took a seat under a mounted deer and a sign that read “ IT IS WHAT IT IS .” Bell told me that he’d begun working there in 1973, fixing cars, selling junk food, and providing information. “We have quite a few folks gathered around here,” he told me. “They’ll be ganging up here shortly. You can’t get in here sometimes. Customers, acquaintances, yadda yadda. Some of the board hangs out in here. The mayor. Town employees. They meet here. Everything is unofficial. Just local folks.”

Bell started telling stories about the old days. His father used to sell “liquor by the drink in the back room, illegally,” he said. “The sheriff would come by—he’d give him a drink. Then the sheriff would continue on to Trenton,” the county seat. “That’s just the way it was. Everybody was O.K. with it. You can’t do that now.” During Hurricane Florence, Bell said, he gave away all his snacks, drinks, and useful supplies. “Even to a neighbor lady who don’t like me for some reason,” he said.

One of Barbee’s fellow town commissioners, Mike Duffy, walked in, and was followed shortly by another, Ellis Banks. Three-fifths of the town board was now present.

“I can get the mayor here if you want him,” Bell said. “He come here the last couple of days, scolded Mike a little bit.”

Duffy and Barbee chatted about the previous night’s meeting, then Duffy got up to leave. (“Darrell, I’ll bring you a dollar later,” he said, for the diet soda he’d had.) I brought up the subject of newspapers with Bell and a local man, named Jimmy, who’d stopped in.

“Obituaries,” Bell said. “That’s the first thing I look at.”

Jimmy nodded. “Keeping up with who’s died.”

Bell wasn’t sure there was much more to say on the subject. “Do you believe everything you read?” he asked. “What’s the truth? Who wrote it? Where’d they get their information from? It’d be better if I knew the person.”

Bell and Jimmy mused about the few run-ins they’d had with major media. “I was on Fox News during the hurricane,” Bell said. He added, “If you’re in Miami, Florida, and you see someone from Pollocksville, North Carolina—they don’t really know us or really what’s going on. But it’s good to know that’s happening, I reckon.”

Jimmy, like Bender and Bell and Barbee and both of the other board members, is white. Later, I asked Alice Strayhorn, who’s African-American, whether she got any news from chatting with people at Bell’s Corner. She told me it was a mostly white crowd there. “I just get my car done and be on my way,” she said.

Barbee and I got in her car and drove a quarter-mile down the road to the Filling Station, which occupies the old Jenkins Gas building. It’s a charitable operation started by members of Pollocksville Presbyterian. The chair of its executive board is a peppy woman named Mary Ann Bender LeRay, who, when we stopped by, had gathered with a half-dozen staff and volunteers in a back room filled with food items being readied for distribution. “This has been a watering hole in the past couple years,” LeRay told me, “especially after the hurricane—since we didn’t get flooded. So, of course, you’ll be talking and sharing here.”

Ronnie Huffman, the site manager, who is in his seventies, told me, “The story of the rebuilding of this town—which may never be rebuilt back like it was—that’s a lot of what we talk about here.” The group nodded in unison.

As we left, Barbee said, “That’s about the best news source we got.”

It hasn’t always been this way in the United States, or in eastern North Carolina. In the nineteen-forties, Jones County had a newspaper of its own, the Jones Journal , which came out on Thursdays, and was later replaced by the Jones County Journal . Its slogan, “A Better County Through Improved Farm Practices,” gives a sense of its concerns. A typical front-page headline, from 1954: “Fertilizer Supply Adequate; Farmers Urged to Buy Early.” It wasn’t all farming news: there were feel-good pieces (“Spaniel Saves Family of Six,” 1954) and the odd crime story (“Double Murder Claims Jones Native and British Born Wife,” 1956). It was, as even a quick sift through the archives reveals, written for a white audience (“Happersville Negress Kills Mate on Sunday,” 1956).

Back then, Barbee told me, she saw one reporter often. “He came to my mother’s house every Saturday,” she said, “and my mother and grandmother would give him the local news.” They discussed “who had passed away, who was getting married, what was going on with the Daughters of the American Revolution or at church.” Barbee “loved him dearly,” she said, “because he always brought me peanuts or candy.” She called this system “country news.”

The Jones County Journal folded in the early seventies. In 1976, a man named Reuben Moore, who’d created the Pender Post in neighboring Pender County, founded the Jones Post , with the slogan “Bringing Country Journalism Back to the Country.” By “country,” he meant the rural places, Lois Simpson, an early staffer at the paper, told me. I met Simpson, now seventy-one, at her home, where she subsists as a farmer and a writer with her husband, who, in the other room, watched a national broadcast from ABC News as we talked. Pushing aside stacks of old newspapers, V.H.S. tapes, and a lazing dog, Simpson sat down on a fraying couch. “I don’t live like other people,” she said, laughing.

The Jones Post ranged from eight to sixteen pages and ran every Thursday. The front page offered county news; the second page was for obituaries; the third showed local news; the fourth and fifth had church news, Bible verses, and a Biblical cartoon; the sixth offered recipes; the seventh printed classified ads; and the remaining pages had editorials, TV listings, and more local news. It was produced by a skeleton staff in an old high-school building in Trenton, Simpson told me. For a time, she was the editor. “I got paid two dollars an hour for forty hours when I worked about a hundred twenty, and my husband had to do all the photography in the darkroom-bathroom, and sometimes my in-laws had to drive the paper to places and my kids frequently worked for nothing,” she said. “But that’s what it takes to get a paper going.”

Simpson would report from county-commissioner and county-administrator meetings. “They were doing a lot of stuff they shouldn’t be doing,” she told me. Her reporting was responsible for one commissioner and one school superintendent leaving their posts, she said, “and about three or four boards of education being moved on and three or four commissioners being moved on.” She smiled. “If they got up there and said something completely dumb and you put that in the article, then, next election time, they went out the door.” She added, “I did a lot of tail-burning, which I’m probably sorry for, because I’ve paid all these years for those stories.”

A few miles outside Pollocksville, at a ranch-style brick home that sat behind more Christmas decorations than I’d ever seen in a single yard, I met another of the paper’s early staffers, Sondra Ipock Riggs, now seventy-six. As we spoke, a radio played Christmas songs and a crime show was on the TV. “I’m a go-getter,” Riggs said, recalling her reporting days. “I fuss, cuss, and if they don’t do right I’ll raise hell.” She added, “I don’t kiss tails—I kick asses.” A pistol lay on the table beside her easy chair; she’s kept it close since her husband died, a few years ago. “If you’re a news reporter and you’re printing the news, you’re a troublemaker around here,” she said. “They called me the blonde-headed vigilante bitch because I turned in the barge.” In 1987, a garbage barge that had originated in New York was poised to dump three thousand tons of trash in Jones County, until Riggs and others began reporting on it. “That was the biggest news to ever come out of Jones County,” she said. Dan Rather called it “the most-watched load of garbage in the memory of man.” Riggs said, “When I got on the barge, it was cans with toxic material, maggots running off it. You just don’t know. I raised mortal hell.”

In the late eighties, Simpson and Riggs collaborated on a story that led to their firing, they told me. “The final straw came when we did a story on a county commissioner who had done all kinds of underhanded stuff,” Simpson said. Neither could recall exactly what this stuff was; the commissioner in question died in 2013. Simpson told me that he was one of the paper’s important advertisers, and that when Moore saw the story he “threw a fit.” (Moore died in 1988.)

After leaving the Jones Post , Riggs became a county commissioner—she’s served on the board for the last twenty-five years. Simpson ran for local office, too, though she didn’t win. She has worked as a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office, a farmer, a housecleaner, a fruit-stand operator, a G.E.D. and E.S.L. teacher, and has tried to write novels. Locals still occasionally bring her stories that they hope she’ll tell, she said. “Some years ago, they brought a landfill half a mile outside of Maysville and put it on top of unmarked slave graves,” she told me. “It’s awful. I blame me for not getting it done. I would have burnt some ass. But I stay preoccupied a lot of times chasing money to pay the light bill.”

She rummaged through a nearby stack of papers and handed me a copy of the Jones Post from the summer of 2018, one of the last editions she’d seen. The first page said it cost fifty cents. A front-page story about the school dress code ran under the byline “Jones County Schools.” Simpson shook her head. “Most stories have nothing to do with Jones County,” she said.

Simpson told me that she was skeptical of a lot of what she sees now. “Not everything that’s printed is true,” she said, and TV wasn’t much use, either. “You’ve got people who sit down and suck the whole mess up and never dig into what is true. They just swallow it.” Riggs told me, “I watch the weather, mainly. I take the Sun Journal , but it doesn’t tell you much about Jones County. I’m thinking about quitting it. What you gonna do when they don’t print about your county? We have five hundred square miles. We got officials here think they can get away with things. Not advertising jobs, picking who they want.” She went on, “It’s very important for me, honey, to know the news of the county, the state, and the country you live in. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a country, baby.”

The Jones Post still exists, technically. Its publisher is a Gannett executive named Mike Distelhorst. “It’s more of a courtesy, in terms of providing some content to that group of people,” he said, referring to the residents of Jones County, “not what I’d consider a traditional newspaper.” Distelhorst is based in Wilmington, about seventy miles away. When I reached him, on the phone, he couldn’t tell me the weekly page count of the Jones Post , or provide distribution data, or give me the names of any of the paper’s past employees. He did know that it currently has no dedicated staff. He told me to talk to Chris Segal, who edits the three Gannett papers in neighboring counties.

The Jones Post , Segal told me, is run out of the Kinston Free Press newsroom. In Segal’s view, the towns in Jones County don’t have local concerns as much as proxy concerns—people in Pollocksville, for instance, “really are New Bern people at the end of the day,” he said. The Jones Post occasionally has “unique content,” he noted, such as jury-duty lists. “The nonprofits will contribute some things, too,” he said, referring to press releases reframed as stories. I asked Segal if the paper could serve as a civic watchdog, covering crime and corruption. “Our reporters are keeping an eye on those things,” he said. He added, “We called the Sheriff last week. He still hasn’t scheduled an interview with us, because he’s so busy.”

Segal’s predecessor was a man named Bryan Hanks, who worked at the Gaston Gazette and the Shelby Star before becoming editor of the Free Press , in 2002. (“He’s No. 1,” Riggs told me, of Hanks, calling him “the most honest news reporter, and fair, that I’ve ever seen in my life.”) When I arrived at Hanks’s comfortable brick home, in Kinston, he was setting up a mike in his living room, to record a weekly sports-radio podcast—“a loving ripoff of Bill Simmons,” he said. Hanks grew up in the northwestern part of the state. He’s large and loud, and very fond of the word “dude.” When he began editing papers in eastern North Carolina, he said, “I went as far as to research how many stoplights there were. Well, I got in my damn head that there was only one stoplight in Jones County. And I wrote this whole column about that. You would not believe all the angry calls. ‘You’re calling us a one-stoplight county, and there’s actually two!’ People still call me the one-stoplight guy.” During his run as editor of the Jones Post , the paper won two North Carolina Press Association awards, in the column and spot-news categories. It often ran twelve pages, including at least “one fresh story” on a local sports team, school event, or political function, plus the stories from neighboring papers. “It was kind of a feel-good paper, dude,” he said. But the newspaper business was in free fall. The staff of the Free Press shrunk from twenty-three to six, and then two. (There are also a few part-timers now, Segal told me.) They struggled to cover Kinston, let alone Jones County. Hanks quit in 2016.

After leaving the Free Press , Hanks collaborated with B. J. Murphy, a thirtysomething social-media entrepreneur, on an Internet-based experiment in local news. The Neuse News—the name comes from a river that joins the Trent at New Bern—is online-only and ad-supported, and covers three counties, including Jones. Its slogan is “Hyper-Local News with No Pop-Ups, No AP News and No Online Subscription Fees. No Kidding!” It has around four thousand daily e-mail subscribers in the tri-county area, Murphy said. He has two full-time employees—who also work for Magic Mile Media, Murphy’s social-media consultancy—and a handful of contracted writers, videographers, and photographers. In October, 2018, after Hurricane Florence, the Neuse News helped to organize a forum for candidates running for the Jones County board of education and the county’s board of commissioners. (A post with videos from that event is the most recent piece on the site related to Jones County.) Murphy is a former Republican politician—when he was twenty-nine, he became Kinston’s youngest-ever mayor—and the site has a detectable conservative slant, as he does. Still, when an opinion piece criticizing Donald Trump sparked angry comments from readers, he published a blog post on his own site defending the need to listen to different perspectives, more or less. “I just think more people need Jesus and need to stop worrying about the national political scene,” he wrote. “There are more important issues.”

Citing disagreements with Murphy, lack of pay, and concerns about the operation’s long-term viability, Hanks left the Neuse News last year. “If they don’t go to a subscription base, which would defeat the purpose, it’s going under,” he told me. Murphy said, “We’re not in profit mode by any stretch of the imagination,” and he emphasized that the site couldn’t match the scale of a newspaper: “We don’t have enough resources to do all the storytelling in Lenoir County, let alone Jones and Greene.” He applied for a grant through the Facebook Journalism Project “to get a camera and lighting to do more video programming,” he said; Facebook established the grants after building a feature that aggregated local news (because Facebook’s users “wanted to see more local news and community information on Facebook”) and discovering that one in three of its users in the U.S. lived in places that didn’t have enough local journalism to sustain the feature. Last year, Magic Mile Media helped launch Jones County Chat, a weekly Webcast that was created with support from county commissioners and Lenoir County Community College—in order to counter “a lot of rumors,” the county manager told me. But few people I met in Pollocksville had watched it. “I reckon you’ve gotta have the Internet access and the computers,” a clerk of courts in Trenton told me.

A few years ago, when Nancy Barbee first became a town commissioner, she wanted to create “a newsletter that tells people about local news, events, and what’s happening on the board,” how it was funding projects like the rebuilding of the flooded town hall. When she realized that she didn’t have the resources, she started a Facebook page, posting “news blasts” about church homecomings, volunteering opportunities, and Christmas preparations on Main Street. It didn’t last. “I was made to take that Facebook page down,” she told me. “The mayor had this misconception that the town-board minutes would go out on Facebook and everyone would see them. I said, ‘Well, it’s all public record. What’s the big deal?’ They were afraid of public comments about how terrible the board was.” Bender had a different story. “The town attorney told me it wasn’t a good idea,” he said. I asked why. “Who is going to monitor or moderate a Facebook page? I don’t have time. My clerk doesn’t have time.”

“Straight talk, dude,” Bryan Hanks said, sitting in his living room. “It’s scary. Because government officials, they know. You like to think they’re good people, especially in a community as small as Jones County, where everybody knows everybody. But if you don’t have media that’s going to hold them accountable for their actions—or, heck, even just report what they’re doing—how are the citizens going to know? They don’t know.”

About a month after Alice Strayhorn raised her hand at the town-board meeting, I went to see her at her home, a few blocks from where we’d first met. We sat in her tidy living room, on a leather couch, where light from a stained-glass lamp shone on her hands. She held a small switch, pulled from a nearby sapling, which she uses to keep her grandchildren in line. I wanted to know more about what Strayhorn thought of Pollocksville and politics and the press. “I’m a Democrat,” she told me. “I like democracy. I don’t have friends who like Trump. But people don’t really discuss politics or religion.”

I asked her about race relations in the town, which is a little whiter than the county as a whole. She said that when Barack Obama ran for President, some Obama signs, mostly in the yards of black residents, were torn down. “Stole out of our yards,” she said. “You’d put it up and it’d be gone the next morning. It was the Republicans,” she added. “One or two got caught.” Strayhorn said she was attending town meetings then, too, but she never mentioned the issue. “I’m by myself there,” she said. (“It may have happened,” Bender said, of the sign incident. “I just don’t remember it.” As for race relations in Pollocksville, he said, “I would say it’s fine. It’s certainly not perfect anywhere.”)

Strayhorn said that she wished she got more news about jobs, flooding mitigation, and new playgrounds. “Also,” she said, “getting Trump out of office.” She watches CNN, but “it isn’t much help,” she said. (Her husband tries to watch Fox News, she added, “to see what they say.”) During Hurricane Florence, the most reliable way for her to learn about what had happened to Pollocksville, and her neighborhood, was the Facebook page of “some local guy,” a black resident of Pollocksville, “who stayed and walked the streets, through the waters, and posted pictures of everything.”

We stepped out of her house, and Strayhorn took me to her beauty parlor, at the far end of Main Street, in a former gas station. “It’s just a shaggy old shop, but it makes me my living,” she said. “I have only one white customer. I used to have a few, but they came at night, so the neighbors wouldn’t see them here.” It was one of a few public places in Pollocksville, she said, where black folks in town could comfortably share the news.

A lot of that news is not good, and none of it is widely told. A black man in his late twenties told me, “People have gone. Houses are being torn down, left to crumble. If you’re my age, you really can’t make it around here. You have to move to Charlotte or out of state.” Pointing to a volunteer firefighter station, across a field from a historically black neighborhood called Garnett Heights, on the edge of town, he told me, “Cops sit over there.” He went on, “I’m gonna keep it real with you, we call that the Klan meeting, because you never know. It still lurks.” A U.N.C. report on the legacy of segregation in Jones County noted that Pollocksville never formally annexed Garnett Heights, and so residents of the neighborhood cannot vote in municipal elections.

The man in his twenties, whose family lives in Garnett Heights, asked that I not share his name, so that he could speak freely. He works at a factory in a neighboring county. Summing up life in the area, he said, “Once you cross into eastern North Carolina, it’s just more prejudice and lower wages. Who’s telling that story?”

Sitting with Bryan Hanks, in Kinston, I asked him what it would cost, annually, to produce a real, twelve-page weekly paper in Jones County. After some back-of-the-envelope calculating, he settled on three hundred thousand dollars. “But that doesn’t cover a building,” he said. Who’d pay for that? “I can’t think of anybody on top of my head,” he said. Penny Abernathy, the U.N.C. professor, told me that when it comes to journalism in poorer areas, like Jones County, “I do not see a for-profit model, at least for now.” One hope is that nonprofits will step in. But, so far, Abernathy said, foundations have provided only a fraction of the money that news organizations used to have—and most of that money has gone to “the big national-level organizations,” not “into really what we call local news.” It’s possible that the solution will depend on public funding, she said. New Jersey recently committed a portion of an unexpected windfall to a nonprofit that aims to strengthen local news. State representatives in Massachusetts proposed a commission to study the matter and then to recommend legislation.

In addition to covering “the routine government meetings like the town council,” Abernathy said, local newspapers “have also kind of bound the community together in a variety of ways. So, if you have a business there, they got customers through the door. And, at the same time, they kind of took the national headlines and showed you how it was very much related to the community where you live.” Dan Ryan, a town commissioner in Maysville, told me that the region didn’t understand itself as well as it should in the absence of local reporting. “The census is coming up,” he pointed out. “How many people have we lost since Florence that aren’t ever coming back? Will we still have ten thousand in the county? Are we down to nine thousand? Reporting along those lines hasn’t happened, along with the ongoing recovery effort—who’s doing what, grants that had been received, money that’s been distributed, who’s been helped. It just gets left to be told through the rumor mill.”

A few weeks after leaving Pollocksville, I called Mayor Bender to tell him that I’d received a tip. Did he really spend sixty-seven thousand dollars of town money, I asked, without the approval of the town board, on rebuilding the town hall where he’d kept an office for decades? He said that he had. “We signed architectural contracts to move the town hall to another lot. We’ll close in the next week or two on the purchase.” This money had to be put toward that specific project, he told me. Anyone who was confused by that “lacks education on the use of public funds,” he said.

I asked if he could provide proof that the aid was tied to the renovation of the town hall. “Charles,” he said, “this has kind of gone way off the edge from what you said you wanted to talk to me about.” When I had first contacted Bender, in November, I had told him I was writing a piece about news deserts, and what happens when an area goes without substantive reporting. “I kind of feel like I’m being a majorly interviewed person here,” he said. I reminded him that he’d told me previously that if a journalist got a tip about Jay Bender it would be reasonable for that journalist to look into it.

“I think the minutes and all my reports would reflect that I’ve made no secret of wanting to preserve the town hall,” he said. “No secret at all.” He added, “I have been confronted by a couple of board members who said that I was not being objective. And I have firmly admitted, publicly and privately, that I wanted to see that project succeed.” Bender, returning to an argument he’d made in our first conversation, told me, “Individuals have a personal responsibility to get the facts.” I asked how a poor Pollocksville resident driving to another county to work a twelve-hour day in a factory, then returning home to young children, could realistically be expected to get facts about the financing of a project like the town hall. “Let’s don’t pick on the town hall,” he said.

As we got toward the end of our conversation, Bender acknowledged that a newspaper could be useful to explain how and why public funds are used for certain projects. And I acknowledged that it was unusual for a reporter from a national magazine to call up the mayor of a town of three hundred people and ask about the paperwork for sixty-seven thousand dollars in public money. Later, Bender sent minutes from town meetings when the subject of the town hall’s preservation was addressed. The notes were mostly brief. Another town commissioner, Sherry Henderson, said, “The proper channels should have been followed,” but pointed out that, at the time these decisions were being made, “We were concerned with survival.” It wasn’t clear whether the town was even going to come back from Hurricane Florence; in some ways, it’s still not clear. The mayor, she suggested, was just trying to get things done.

It didn’t seem like a dire scandal, but it did seem like the kind of thing that a local reporter might ask about, and might write about, if there were an outlet for such a story. Maybe some tail-burning would have been involved. But no one in Pollocksville had a professional responsibility to ask annoying questions about the things that matter only to the citizens of that town, and to no one else, and to print the answers. I was writing a story that was mostly for other people, who didn’t live here. And a lot of people in Pollocksville wouldn’t necessarily trust what I published—they were only inclined to believe stories from people who’d spent more than a few days in their county, and more than a few months trying to understand it. They had told me so.

On the phone with the mayor, I sensed the awkwardness of our situation. Somebody else was supposed to be asking these questions.

“I do feel like you’re picking on me a little bit,” Bender said. “I’m not used to this.”

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Astra Taylor

By Jill Lepore

• Learn English
• Universities
• Practice Tests
• Study Abroad
• Knowledge Centre
• Ask Experts
• Study Abroad Consultants
• Post Content
• General Topics
• Articles/Knowledge Sharing
• How things work

If There Were No Newspapers

How would your life without news papers.

IF THERE WERE NO NEWSPAPERS Imagine getting up in the morning, and sitting for breakfast without a newspaper! The morning tea would lose its flavour. From the bebroom you hear the voice of the announcer over the radio telling you of the day's disaster. Just plain statements of facts, no details, no photographs, no editorials, no asides, no snide comments, no bouquets, no brickbats. How dull it would be! Nothing like a good full-coloured accunt of who won the elections and who didn't. And what shmreemati so-and-so has to say about the " No Tobacco Day". Which jobs are available or which aren't. The TV news reader will only state a few facts and show one old file photograph and that's that. No sports coloumn, or something comic, or no puzzles and crosswords. Infact no leisurely reading with all the time in the world. But, on the other hand, one would wake up without a feeling of impending disaster. " god's in his heaven, all's right with the world." No pre election surveys and no analysis of election results. No report by ace cricketers on India's debacle at the World Cup. No predictions of gloom by astrologers. No investigate journalism. How wonderful to greet a world without earthquakes and crimes and killings on battlefields. Since there are no newspapers we do not know anything about these things. What a relief to step out of the house without knowing the train services might be disrupted or that all flights have been cancelled because of strike. How nice not to know that tommorow the price of gold might fall, so that you can blitherly buy as much as you want today. Indeed, we have become so used to getting news of the world readymade that we can only imagine what would happen if there were no newspapers. But I doubt if we would be able to accept such a situation. Without a newspaper we are nothing as we are secured only because of newspapers. It is a great communication system and also helps us to improve our knowledge. The meaning of the words given above: Editorial : Special article in a newspaper, usually written by the editor. Asides : Remark not directly related to the main subject. Snide : Indirect and unpleasent. Bouquets : Praise. Brickbats : Criticism, censure. Impending : About to occur. Investigate journalism : Practice of journalists trying to discover important facts of public interest that have been concealed. Debacle : Sudden and complete failure or collapse. Blithely : Happily.

Probably other media of news would have dominated that place. Though there was minimum dailies in yester years, there was a radio in the public place like park or panchayat office,to broadcast the news. Anyhow it is nice but novel thinking,Ranushree Ji!

Hi ranushree, I was wondering, It is really a very good resource. Thanks for posting it Thanks again. Regards VCB

Hi, I like your style of writing. And I feel if there were no newspapers, TV would have dominated its place for sure and in a better way. I felt that this article should have been posted in the Entertainment section. I enjoyed and actually imagined the way you have described the situation in your article. Keep posting such writing of yours... Regards

Thanks to all of my friends for appreciating the post.

This is one of the best articles on newspapers.

• Do not include your name, "with regards" etc in the comment. Write detailed comment, relevant to the topic.
• No HTML formatting and links to other web sites are allowed.
• This is a strictly moderated site. Absolutely no spam allowed.

Top Contributors

• Vandana (29)
• DR.N.V. Sriniva... (27)
• Neeru Bhatt (26)
• Vandana (237)
• Umesh (227)
• DR.N.V. Sriniva... (225)

About IndiaStudyChannel.com

Being the most popular educational website in India, we believe in providing quality content to our readers. If you have any questions or concerns regarding any content published here, feel free to contact us using the Contact link below.

• Admissions Consulting
• Adsense Revenue
• Become an Editor
• Membership Levels
• Winners & Awards
• Guest Posting
• Help Topics

STUDY ABROAD

• Study in Foreign Universities
• Study in Germany
• Study in Italy
• Study in Ireland
• Study in France
• Study in Australia
• Study in New Zealand
• Indian Universities
• Nursing in Mangalapuram
• BDS in Mangalore
• MBA in Bangalore
• Nursing admissions in Mangalore
• Distance MBA
• B Pharm in Mangalore
• MBBS in Mangalore
• BBA in Mangalore
• MBA Digital Marketing
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use

Promoted by: SpiderWorks Technologies, Kochi - India. ©

University Library

American Newspapers, 1800-1860: An Introduction

Note: Images referenced directly in the transcript are identified in square brackets.

Consider these two newspapers. [graphic: New York Times (New York, NY). March 8, 2012, p. 1; and National Enquirer (New York, NY). March 19, 2012, p. 1.] You probably make judgments about the type of content and the quality of information each contains simply by seeing the covers: how each is distributed, whether the information it reports is reliable, and what viewpoint it tends to emphasize. These judgments likely shape the way you interpret and use the information you find in each.

When using historical newspapers, it’s helpful to possess a similar knowledge of each newspaper’s quality, affiliations, coverage, and biases. This can be difficult when you are unfamiliar with a newspaper, especially if the newspaper is first encountered in a newspaper database, as a list of articles in a results set. Databases like 19th Century U.S. Newspapers enable you to search across a wide range of newspapers, but what you get is a jumble of articles. So while newspaper databases undoubtedly make it easier to discover articles in historical newspapers, they can also make it more to difficult to see each article as part of a whole newspaper, as its original readers would have. When you find a particular article, it is helpful if you can place it in its original context, and see it as its first readers might have seen it.

To help you put newspaper articles in their social and cultural contexts, we have prepared this brief overview of antebellum American newspapers. We will cover developments in the production and distribution of newspapers, and in the evolution of the concept of journalism. The full scope of this topic would include the construction of news as a cultural practice, and its reception by readers, which goes beyond what we can cover in a tutorial. We hope this introduction will help you begin thinking about newspapers in terms of their authors, publishers and intended audiences.

In the early 1800s, newspaper publishing bore little resemblance to the business it is today. Most newspapers had a small circulation, and were staffed by a very small number of workers. Division of labor in the newspaper publishing process – newsgathering and reporting, editing, and printing–was uncommon, though it became more so as the period progressed. Even in the larger, urban newspapers, the owner of the paper would usually serve as the reporter and editor. Apprentices often assisted with printing and delivery.

Although men continued to dominate newspaper work in this era, women sometimes worked on newspapers as writers, editors, compositors, and even publishers. If a woman did work on a newspaper, it was usually a country newspaper. On frontier newspapers especially, a publisher’s wife would assist her husband, and in some cases she assumed complete control when he died. Other women were writers, editors, and publishers in their own right, usually on a newspaper connected with a religious denomination, a voluntary association, or reform movement 1 . Margaret Fuller is probably the most famous newspaperwoman from this period, serving as a correspondent for the New York Tribune . In 1850 the Tribune’s editor hired another woman, Jane Swisshelm as his Washington correspondent 2 . During her career Swisshelm was published in many newspapers, including the New York Times , and the Chicago Tribune 3 . For the most part, though, the city dailies were closed to women, especially on the printing side 4 . Women contributed more heavily to country, religious, and reform newspapers. The full scope of women’s contributions to antebellum newspapers will probably never be known, due to lack of documentation. Most newspaper articles were either unsigned, or signed only with initials or pseudonyms. This newspaper was published by a woman named Augustina Parsons 5 , but the publisher statement identifies her only as “A. Parsons” [graphic: Alabama Watchman (Cahawba, AL). Aug. 8, 1820, p. 1.].

The business of newspaper publishing was highly political politicized. While modern-day newspapers claim to be impartial sources of fact-based journalism, antebellum newspapers were often explicitly affiliated with a political party, and focused on delivering that party’s point of view. In return, the political parties subsidized their newspapers, and those subsidies were important to the business model of newspaper publishing. One way to subsidize a newspaper was through government printing contracts and other forms of political patronage. These printing contracts remained a significant source of funding for smaller and rural papers throughout this period. These newspapers then became papers of record for the communities they served. Given the smaller circulation and profits, newspaper publishers depended on the postal service as a means of distribution, and the government encouraged this practice by reducing the postage on newspapers. In contrast to higher rates for letters and other correspondence, a 1792 law set the postage rate for newspapers circulating in state or within 100 miles of publication at 1 cent, and out of state or beyond 100 miles at 1.5 cents. This law was modified several times throughout the 1800s, leading to the development of official classes of mail. Post office officials often worked as newspaper agents, soliciting subscriptions and collecting remittances.

Now that we have introduced the publishing process, let’s look at the newspapers themselves. Although you will find considerable variation, newspapers from this time shared some physical characteristics. First, all newspapers had a front page, at the top of which was a nameplate bearing the newspaper’s title. The nameplate also included information like place of publication, as well as the date, volume, and number of each issue . Some nameplates identified the publisher, price, and terms of subscription. A nameplate might also include a motto. Another common feature of newspapers was the masthead, sometimes called the publisher’s box. The masthead usually appeared inside the newspaper–in a 4-page newspaper, it usually appeared on page two or three. The masthead gave the name of the newspaper, often in shortened form, and sometimes repeated information from the nameplate, like the date, place of publication, or name of the publisher. The masthead might also identify other personnel associated with the newspaper, such as the editor. Editorials often appeared beneath the masthead. There was less consistency in how content was organized–some newspapers filled their front pages with advertisements, relegating news to the second and third pages; some reserved the front page for news; still others combined news and advertisements throughout. Even when the front page carried news, the most current news usually did not appear there, but on pages 2 or 3. That’s because the front and back pages were usually printed first, so that they would have time to dry before entering the mails. In this 1849 issue of the Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette , the latest-news was printed on page 3, while the front page [graphic: Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette (Milwaukee, Wisc.). Feb. 28, 1849, p. 1.] carried advertising. Most newspapers reprinted articles from other newspapers, and expected that their own articles would be reprinted elsewhere. With the introduction of the machine printing press in 1814, it became possible to print larger sheets of paper, and this became the standard for nineteenth century newspapers 6 . In urban areas such as New York or Philadelphia, papers competed with each other to be the largest, both in number and size of pages. Although smaller city papers printed fewer, smaller pages to keep down costs , the large commercial dailies expanded to six or eight pages, each with eight to ten columns of text 7 . This issue of the New York Journal of Commerce from the 1850s [graphic: New York Journal of Commerce (New York, NY). Jan. 1, 1856.] is 10 columns wide, and 8 pages long–a massive paper for its period. The New York Journal of Commerce was exceptionally large even for its day. More typically, articles were displayed in 5 to 8 columns, which ran the full length of the page. As mentioned earlier, it was not uncommon for a publisher to fill the front page with advertisements. The advertisements, which often occupied up to 50% of the available space 8 , were set in single columns with little graphic display, making them difficult at times to distinguish from news items. Half of this page is filled with advertising, though it’s difficult to tell from looking which are the advertisements and which the news stories [graphic: Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette (Raliegh, NC). Mar. 5, 1819, p. 3.]. Occasionally an advertisement might be embellished with a woodcut illustration, and the number of illustrations increased towards the end of this period. Even by the late 1850s, however, newspapers consisted primarily of text. Newspapers carried surprisingly little local news, sometimes none at all. Much of the news dealt either with government, politics, or commerce, but you can also find news about wars, disasters, science, medicine, agriculture, social controversies, religion, and crime. In addition to news, you’ll also find literary works like fiction and poetry.

There were different types of papers for different audiences. Political papers were especially popular in this period. A political paper, as the name suggests, covered politics and government. For example, the Washington Globe was a political paper affiliated with Andrew Jackson’s administration [graphic: Globe (Washington, D.C.). March 4, 1841.]. Looking closer, we can see that the majority of this page is devoted to reporting on the activities of Congress. Reading through the newspaper, we encounter overviews of election results, and notices of presidential appointments. This newspaper would be a good source for information on the Jackson presidency, the Democratic Party, or the federal government; but is probably not the best source for news about businesses or rural life. Because political newspapers were often operated by people close to the political leaders they covered, they can be both valuable and unreliable sources of information. For example, you would expect the Washington Globe to document accurately the Jackson Administration’s views on the Second Bank of the United States, but you would treat with skepticism any factual information about the Bank itself. As a Democratic party organ, the Globe was committed to advancing Jackson’s Bank policy.

You might be wondering how you can identify a paper’s political alignment? It’s not always easy, but there are tell-tale signs. For example, a motto on the nameplate might suggest a political ideology. In the case of the Globe , its motto “The World is Governed Too Much” declares the Democratic party’s anti-government stance. Sometimes, a newspaper will reveal its political affiliation in its title. This newspaper is obviously a Whig party organ [graphic: La Porte County Whig (La Porte, Ind.). May 17, 1845, p. 1.]. A newspapers might also publish its party’s ticket right below the newspaper masthead: this newspaper is a Democratic party organ [graphic: Mississippian (Jackson, Miss.). July 28, 1837, p. 3. ]. This newspaper, on the other hand, is a Whig newspaper [graphic: Vermont Watchman and State Journal (Montpelier, VT). Sept. 21, 1848, p. 2.] Keep in mind, though, that this was a period of rapid changes to the party system, so sometimes you’ll need to do a little detective work: this newspaper says it’s publishing the Republican party ticket–that would be the “Old Republicans” [graphic: Providence Patriot and Columbian Phoenix (Providence, RI). January 21, 1832, p. 2,]–not the National Republican party of John Quincy Adams, and definitely not the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln! If these measures fail, an examination of the newspaper’s editorials will usually reveal its stance: this paper, was probably not a Democratic party organ [graphic: no.070. “The President Has Refused His Signature to the Maysville Road Bill.” New Hampshire Statesman and Concord Register (Concord, NH). June 5, 1930, p. 3, col. B ,], though you would want to examine several editorials before deciding for sure. In any case, you can be fairly confident that a newspaper of this era won’t hide its political agenda, if it has one.

Some other political papers include: the Washington National Intelligencer , the New York Evening Post , the Baltimore Republican , the Philadelphia North American , and the Ohio Statesman.

Another common type of antebellum newspaper was the commercial paper. An example of a popular commercial paper is the New York Mercantile Advertiser . Commercial papers focused on the world of business and commerce. Looking at the first page, we see that it is entirely devoted to advertisements [graphic: Mercantile Advertiser (New York, NY). May 1, 1820, p. 1.]. The rest of this paper covers shipping news, prices current, and business information, often reprinted from other commercial newspapers. Newspapers like these were published for merchants and financiers. Some commercial papers include: the New York Journal of Commerce , the Boston Daily Advertiser , and the Charleston Courier .

One reason for the narrow focus of these early political and commercial papers was that they were published largely for commercial and political elites. They did not try to attract a general audience. These large daily newspapers cost 8 to 10 dollars for a yearly subscription, and were not sold as individual issues. Keep in mind that one dollar in 1840 would be approximately twenty dollars today, and that the daily wage for a laborer at that time ranged from 40 cents to 1 dollar 9 . These high prices made political and commercial newspapers too expensive for many people. By the 1830s, however, this situation had changed, and newspapers started reaching out to a broader audience.

Founded in 1827, Freedom’s Journal was the first black newspaper in the United States. Although Frederick Douglass’s abolitionist newspapers are probably the best known of the 19th century black newspapers, most African American newspapers of this period were not really abolitionist organs 10 . Instead they addressed the concerns of African Americans in the Northern communities they served: racism, violence, self-defense, the various colonization schemes, and strategies for self-improvement 11 . The black newspapers were published by and for the educated black middle class, which was characterized less by material wealth than the promulgation of middle-class respectability and morality. They were culturally and socially conservative in that they promoted temperance, self-help, education, and moral reform as solutions to the problems facing the black community, rather than resistance or revolution 12 .

Black newspapers had much in common with other newspapers of the era. They were founded to advance a particular platform 13 and often advocated moral reform 14 . Like other newspapers of that time, they were usually short-lived.

Historians have not been able to identify any southern black newspapers from this period. There were communities of free blacks in the south, and it would be incorrect to assume that there were no newspapers serving these communities, especially since so many black newspapers were never preserved 15 . A newspaper might have been published in secret, possibly even without a printing press. We have, for example, a hand-written black newspaper from New Orleans, published in 1865 16 .

The first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, began publication in 1828. This newspaper was an official tribal newspaper, and was founded in part to defend Cherokee land rights against the federal government’s emerging policy of forced removal. Other so-called “Native American newspapers” were published for Native Americans, often by church missionaries, like this newspaper published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [graphic: Ne Jaguhnigoagesgwathah = The Mental Elevator (Cattaraugus Reservation, NY). Nov. 9, 1848, p. 1.]. This newspaper was published for Indians living on an Iroquois reservation in New York . Native American newspapers of this period could be in a native language, or in English. If English was used, it was often because the publisher hoped to influence government policy toward Native Americans 17 . Historians have been able to identify approximately 15 Native American newspapers published between 1828 and 1860 18 . Like many other newspapers from this era, particularly black newspapers, few Native American newspapers were preserved, and at most only scattered issues survived.

Shortly after the launch of the first African American and Native American newspapers, the first inexpensive daily newspapers began to appear These newspapers, called “penny papers”, further expanded the newspaper audience, and are the subject of the next tutorial.

Learn more about antebellum American newspapers from our guide to American Newspapers, 1800-1860 .

1 . Robert F Karolevitz, Newspapering in the Old West: A Pictorial History of Journalism and Printing on the Frontier (Seattle: Superior Publishing, 1965), 173-79; Lewis A. Pryor, “The ‘Adin Argus’: The End of the Hand Press Era of Country Weeklies,” Pacific Historian 17, no. 1 (January, 1973): 6; Marion Marzolf, Marion, Up From the Footnote: a History of Women Journalists (New York: Hastings House, 1977), 12; Milton W. Hamilton, The Country Printer: New York State, 1785-1830 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 71; Patricia Okker, Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth Century American Women Editors (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 7; Clarence S. Brigham, Journals and Journeymen: A Contribution to the History of Early American Newspapers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), 71, 78.

2 . Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 847; “A Staunch Foe of Slavery” [Obituary for Jane Grey Swisshelm],” New York Times , 23 July, 1884, p. 1; Sylvia D. Hoffert, Jane Grey Swisshelm: An Unconventional Life, 1815-1884 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 3.

3 . Hoffert writes that Swisshelm was also published in the Atlanta Constitution , the Washington Evening Star , the Boston Commonwealth , the Lily , the Liberator , the Kaleidoscope , the Ohio Cultivator , and the New England Farmer , in Jane Grey Swisshelm , 191.

4 . Madelon Golden Schilpp and Sharon M. Murphy identify at least three other “great” newspaperwomen of this period: Anne Newport Royall, Cornelia Walter, and Jane Cunningham Croly. Great Women of the Press (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 21-36, 62-73, 85-94. Clarence S. Brigham identifies 15 women newspaper publishers working between 1800 and 1820 in Journals and Journeymen , 73.

5 . Attribution by Brigham in Journals and Journeymen , 73.

6 . Ralph Green, “Early American Power Printing Presses,” Studies in Bibliography 4 (1951-1952): 145.

7 . Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960 , 3d ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1962), 294-95.

8 . Fred F. Endres, “‘We Want Money and Must Have It’: Profile of an Ohio Weekly, 1841-1847,” Journalism History 7, no. 2 (Summer, 1980): 69.

9 . Scott Derks and Tony Smith, The Value of a Dollar: Colonial Era to the Civil War, 1600-1865 (Millerton, N.Y.: Grey House, 2005), 307.

10 . Frankie Hutton, The Early Black Press in America, 1827 to 1860 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993), ix.

11 . Martin E. Dann, The Black Press, 1827-1890: The Quest for National Identity (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 16, 33.

12 . Hutton, The Early Black Press , x-xiii. The portraits in this section are of: Justin Holland, musician, educated at Oberlin College, fluent in Spanish and English. See David K. Bradford, “Holland, Justin,” in African American National Biography , ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0001/e4897; Alexander Crummell, priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church, orator, educated at Queen’s College, Cambridge. See Benjamin Brawley, Early Negro American Writers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 299-305; Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, renowned musician. See Eric Gardner, “Greenfield, Elizabeth Taylor,” in African American National Biography , http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0001/e0231; Sarah Parker Remond, abolitionist, physician, educated at Bedford College for Ladies in London. See Karen Jean Hunt, “Remond, Sarah Parker,” in African American National Biography , http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0001/e0481; and Edward James Roye, son of an affluent merchant, educated at Oberlin college, became an advocate for black emigration to Liberia, and eventually served as that country’s fifth president. See Peter J. Duignan, “Roye, Edward James,” in African American National Biography , http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0001/e1186.

13 . James P. Danky, and Maureen E. Hady, African American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), xxxi.

14 . Hutton, The Early Black Press , ix-xvii.

15 . Danky and Hady, African American Newspapers , xxxi; Hutton, The Early Black Press, xiv.

16 . Handwritten newspapers were unusual, but not completely unheard of. See Roy Alden Atwood, “Handwritten Newspapers on the Iowa Frontier,” Journalism History 7 (1980): 56-67; and Warren J. Brier, “The ‘Flumgudgeon Gazette and Bumble Bee Budget’,” Journalism Quarterly 36 (1959): 317-320.

17 . Daniel F. Littlefield, and James W. Parins, American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826-1924 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), xii; James P. Danky, and Maureen E. Hady, Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828-1982: Bibliography, Publishing Record, and Holdings (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), xv.

18 . The number depends on how one distinguishes between a newspaper and a periodical (e.g. magazine). Littlefield and Parins, American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers , 425-26; Danky and Hady, Native American Periodicals , xv.

Bibliography

African American National Biography . Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.  

Brigham, Clarence S. Journals and Journeymen: A Contribution to the History of Early American Newspapers . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950.  

Brown, Warren. Check list of Negro newspapers in the United States, 1827-1946 . Jefferson City: School of Journalism, Lincoln University, 1946.  

Danky, James P., and Maureen E. Hady. African American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.  

——. Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828-1982: Bibliography, Publishing Record, and Holdings . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984.  

Dann, Martin E. The Black Press, 1827-1890: The Quest for National Identity . New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971.  

Derks, Scott, and Tony Smith. The Value of a Dollar: Colonial Era to the Civil War, 1600-1865 . Millerton, N.Y.: Grey House, 2005.  

Endres, Fred F. “‘We Want Money and Must Have It’: Profile of an Ohio Weekly, 1841-1847.” Journalism History 7, no. 2 (Summer, 1980): 68-71.  

Fogelson, Raymond D. “Sequoyah.” In Encyclopedia of North American Indians , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.  

Green, Ralph. “Early American Power Printing Presses.” Studies in Bibliography 4 (1951-1952): 143-153.  

Hamilton, Milton W. 1936. The Country Printer: New York State, 1785-1830 . New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.  

Hoffert, Sylvia D. Jane Grey Swisshelm: an Unconventional Life, 1815-1884 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.  

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.  

Hutton, Frankie. The Early Black Press in America, 1827 to 1860 . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993.  

Karolevitz, Robert F. Newspapering in the Old West: A Pictorial History of Journalism and Printing on the Frontier . Seattle: Superior Publishing, 1965.  

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr., and James W. Parins. American Indian and Alaska Native Newspapers and Periodicals, 1826-1924 . Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984.  

Marzolf, Marion. Up From the Footnote: a History of Women Journalists . New York: Hastings House, 1977.  

Moran, James. Printing Presses: History and Development from the Fifteenth Century to Modern Times . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.  

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History, 1690-1960 . 3d ed. New York: MacMillan, 1962.  

Nord, David Paul. Communities of Journalism: a History of Newspapers and Their Readers . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.  

Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors: Sarah J. Hale and the Tradition of Nineteenth Century American Women Editors . Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.  

Potter, Vilma Raskin. A Reference Guide to Afro-American Publications and Editors, 1827-1946 . Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993.  

Pride, Armistead Scott, and Clint C. Wilson, II. A History of the Black Press . Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1997.  

Pryor, Lewis A. “The ‘Adin Argus'” The End of the Hand Press Era of Country Weeklies.” Pacific Historian 17, no. 1 (January, 1973): 1-18.  

Schilpp, Madelon Golden, and Sharon M. Murphy. Great Women of the Press . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.  

“A Staunch Foe of Slavery” [Obituary for Jane Grey Swisshelm].” New York Times , 23 July, 1884, p. 5.  

Essay on Newspaper for Students and Children

500+ words essay on newspaper.

Newspaper is a printed media and one of the oldest forms of mass communication in the world . Newspaper publications are frequency-based like daily, weekly, fortnightly. Also, there are many newspaper bulletins which have monthly or quarterly publication. Sometimes there are multiple editions in a day. A newspaper contains news articles from around the world on different topics like politics, sports, entertainment, business, education, culture and more. The newspaper also contains opinion and editorial columns, weather forecasts , political cartoons, crosswords, daily horoscopes, public notices and more.

History of Newspapers

Newspaper’s circulation started in the 17 th century. Different countries have different timelines to start the publication of Newspapers. In 1665, the 1 st real newspaper was printed in England. The first American newspaper named “Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick” was printed in 1690. Similarly, for Britain, it all starts from 1702 and in Canada, in the year 1752 the first newspaper named Halifax Gazette started its publication.

In the late 19 th century, newspapers became very common and were cheaply available due to the abolishment of stamp duty on them. But, in the early 20 th century, computer technology started replacing the old labor method of printing.

Importance of Newspaper

Newspaper is a very powerful medium of spreading information among people.  Information is a very vital thing as we need to know what is happening around us. Also, awareness to the happenings at our surrounding helps us in better planning and decision.

Government and other official announcements are done in a newspaper. Government and private sector employment-related information like job vacancies and different competitive related information are also published in the newspaper.

Weather forecasts, business-related news, political, economic, international, sports and entertainment-related all information are published in the newspaper. Newspaper is the ideal source of increasing current affairs. In most of the household in the current society, the morning starts with a reading newspaper.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Newspaper and other Communication Channels

In this age of digitization, abundant data are available on the internet. Most of the news channel and newspaper publishing houses to cope up with the trend of digitization have opened their own website and mobile application. Information spreads instantly via social media and websites.

In this current scenario where information is almost available at real-time on the internet, the newspaper in its original form seems to face a treat of existence. However, the daily, weekly papers still hold its importance in this digital era. The newspaper is still considered as the authentic source of any information.

Most of the newspapers also have a special section for the young and school students to express and show their talent. Several articles on the quiz, essay, short story, painting are published which makes newspaper articles interesting among school students. It also helps in inculcating the habit of reading the newspaper from an early age.

Newspapers are a great source of information that can be available at home. Each and everyone must ensure to imbibe the habit of reading newspapers in their lives. In today’s digital world, online source of information is readily available but the authenticity and credibility of such information are not known. It is the newspaper which ensures to provide us accurate and verified information. Newspapers are permanent as because they have been able to earn the faith of the people with its validated information. Socially, the newspaper plays an important role in the upbringing and maintaining the morale and harmony of society to a larger extent.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Advertisement

If there were no newspapers, pdf file to your email immediately purchase notes & paper solution. @ rs. 50/- each (gst extra).

Essay Marathi

• Privacy Policy
• DMCA Policy

Get every types of Essays for students

Essay on “If there were no Newspaper” Essay English

Essay on “if there were no newspaper”  essay english.

Your morning cup of tea would lose its flavour if not accompanied by a newspaper. You'd find your whole day incomplete if you didn't get, for some reason or the other, to browse through an account of the latest events in the world.

But imagine the scene if there were no newspapers. Where would we get news about the world from? Maybe over the radio. But then, there would be no photographs, no comments, nothing that is visible. It would just be a voice telling you of the happenings all over the world. 

How boring it would be! TV news? Yes, but one cannot carry the TV and watch it wherever and whenever one has the time. We have to be seated on the sofa in front of the TV when the newsreader is reading the news. Besides, a newspaper is cheap, and nearly everyone can afford it. Not so a TV.

If there were no newspapers, there would be no comic strips, no sports columns, no crosswords, no advertisements. In fact, one would not have anything to fold and put in the bag, to be read on the train or bus on the way to work. 

There would be no letters to the editor, in which people express their opinions. How would one inform the world about the births and deaths in their family? Or if one wanted to buy or sell anything? Matrimonial advertisements in newspapers are very popular; and many happy marriages are the result of these advertisements.

Unlike reports over the radio and TV, newspaper reports can be cut and stored to be read at a later date. Local newspapers give the local news, so that authorities come to know of the matters like illegal constructions in one's area, or the condition of the roads in one's locality. 

Because of newspapers, a person is aware of what is happening not only in one's own locality but also in the distant corners of the world. Newspapers can also be effectively used to change public opinion about socially important issues like dowry and child marriages.

But on the other hand, imagine how much of paper we would have saved if there were no newspapers! Fewer trees would have to be cut for the sake of paper. But how boring our lives would have been, without the newspaper to satisfy our curiosity and the strong desire for gossip!

accompanied-सोबतीला. glance-ओझरता दृष्टिक्षेप. browse-मनोरंजनासाठी वाचन करणे. comic strips-चित्रकथा मालिका. matrimonial advertisements-विवाहविषयक Filexit. illegal-ahrerit. issues-argia/Herale face.)

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

An Essay on Nothing

Sophia gottfried meditates on the emptiness of non-existence..

In philosophy there is a lot of emphasis on what exists. We call this ontology , which means, the study of being. What is less often examined is what does not exist.

It is understandable that we focus on what exists, as its effects are perhaps more visible. However, gaps or non-existence can also quite clearly have an impact on us in a number of ways. After all, death, often dreaded and feared, is merely the lack of existence in this world (unless you believe in ghosts). We are affected also by living people who are not there, objects that are not in our lives, and knowledge we never grasp.

Upon further contemplation, this seems quite odd and raises many questions. How can things that do not exist have such bearing upon our lives? Does nothing have a type of existence all of its own? And how do we start our inquiry into things we can’t interact with directly because they’re not there? When one opens a box, and exclaims “There is nothing inside it!”, is that different from a real emptiness or nothingness? Why is nothingness such a hard concept for philosophy to conceptualize?

Let us delve into our proposed box, and think inside it a little. When someone opens an empty box, they do not literally find it devoid of any sort of being at all, since there is still air, light, and possibly dust present. So the box is not truly empty. Rather, the word ‘empty’ here is used in conjunction with a prior assumption. Boxes were meant to hold things, not to just exist on their own. Inside they might have a present; an old family relic; a pizza; or maybe even another box. Since boxes have this purpose of containing things ascribed to them, there is always an expectation there will be something in a box. Therefore, this situation of nothingness arises from our expectations, or from our being accustomed. The same is true of statements such as “There is no one on this chair.” But if someone said, “There is no one on this blender”, they might get some odd looks. This is because a chair is understood as something that holds people, whereas a blender most likely not.

The same effect of expectation and corresponding absence arises with death. We do not often mourn people we only might have met; but we do mourn those we have known. This pain stems from expecting a presence and having none. Even people who have not experienced the presence of someone themselves can still feel their absence due to an expectation being confounded. Children who lose one or both of their parents early in life often feel that lack of being through the influence of the culturally usual idea of a family. Just as we have cultural notions about the box or chair, there is a standard idea of a nuclear family, containing two parents, and an absence can be noted even by those who have never known their parents.

This first type of nothingness I call ‘perceptive nothingness’. This nothingness is a negation of expectation: expecting something and being denied that expectation by reality. It is constructed by the individual human mind, frequently through comparison with a socially constructed concept.

Pure nothingness, on the other hand, does not contain anything at all: no air, no light, no dust. We cannot experience it with our senses, but we can conceive it with the mind. Possibly, this sort of absolute nothing might have existed before our universe sprang into being. Or can something not arise from nothing? In which case, pure nothing can never have existed.

If we can for a moment talk in terms of a place devoid of all being, this would contain nothing in its pure form. But that raises the question, Can a space contain nothing; or, if there is space, is that not a form of existence in itself?

This question brings to mind what’s so baffling about nothing: it cannot exist . If nothing existed , it would be something . So nothing, by definition, is not able to ‘be’.

Is absolute nothing possible, then? Perhaps not. Perhaps for example we need something to define nothing; and if there is something, then there is not absolutely nothing. What’s more, if there were truly nothing, it would be impossible to define it. The world would not be conscious of this nothingness. Only because there is a world filled with Being can we imagine a dull and empty one. Nothingness arises from Somethingness, then: without being to compare it to, nothingness has no existence. Once again, pure nothingness has shown itself to be negation.

A world where there is nothing is just an empty shell, you might reply; but the shell itself exists, is something. And even if there were no matter, arguably space could still exist, so could time; and these are not nothing.

Someday we may come face to face with pure space, that is a nothingness waiting to be filled. Possibly, when scientists find a way to safely pilot spaceships into black holes, or are able to create a pure vacuum, we will be forced to look straight into the void. But even if that really is nothing, by entering into that nothingness, humans will destroy it by filling it. Or perhaps we will be consumed by it and all traces left of our existence will be erased.

Death, the ultimate void for humans, makes people uneasy for obvious reasons: all that they are will be forever reduced to a blank space felt only by loved ones, and even that absence will be forgotten someday. However, let us not steer away from these questions about nothingness, even if they may take us to bleak places. When one looks a little closer at the big questions, even though it may seem contradictory, nothingness appears everywhere. And if we want to learn how something came from nothing, or if there ever was nothing, we can not shy away from looking into the scary void a little closer.

© Sophia Gottfried 2020

Sophia Gottfried is the philosophy club president at the Harker School in San Jose.

This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy . X

What Would a World Without Libraries Look Like? Kids Have Their Say.

Rita Meade is a public library manager (and children's librarian at heart) who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Here at Book Riot, she hosts the Dear Book Nerd podcast, a bi-weekly bookish advice show. She reads as much as she possibly can (and it's still never enough), reviews children's books for "School Library Journal," and is the author of a forthcoming picture book called  Edward Gets Messy (Simon & Schuster Young Readers, 2016). She also occasionally writes about funny library stuff over on her blog, and even less occasionally sings in a librarian band. Blog: Screwy Decimal Twitter: @screwydecimal

View All posts by Rita Meade

Sometimes the job has its perks. A few years ago, I was asked to be a judge for a student library essay contest being held by a local councilman. The topic of the contest was “The Future of Libraries,” and the kids who entered produced thoughtful, enlightening, (and quite amusing, in some cases) results .

I will admit that one of the “darker” entries, which sadly did not win, might have been my favorite. (See full essay  here . It’s worth it.)

So when I was asked to be a judge for the contest again this year AND also to host the awards ceremony at my library, I jumped at the chance. The essay contest is not only a great opportunity for students to show off their writing chops, but it also gives me a candid look at what they really think about the function of libraries in their young lives. Plus, these kids will (with any luck) grow up to be lifelong library users, so we need to pay attention to their thoughts and ideas. They’re pretty smart.

This year’s essay topic was “A World Without Libraries” – a topic that has increasing relevance as THE MAN seem to want to squash libraries at every turn.

Students from local elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools were asked to share their views about what the world might be like without libraries and how that would potentially affect their lives. (Note: this must have been part of a broader lesson unit, as the topic also came up during a class visit I had at my library a few months ago, sparking a rather poignant and hilarious discussion .)

I was in charge of choosing three finalists from about 50 or so elementary school entrants, and I can honestly say that each essay I read had value. Of course, there are always standout ideas, so I chose my personal 10 favorite lines from 10 different essays. I hope you enjoy reading the kids’ thoughts as much as I did. (Any spelling, syntax, or punctuation errors by the students have been kept intact.)

Top 10 “A World Without Libraries” Essay Quotes From Brooklyn Kids:

1) “A library is a need in our community. That is what I’m trying to explain to you. A library has knowledge and we can never get too much knowledge. Let’s not forget to mention that going to the library is FUN!”

2) “So a world without libraries would be a dump. People won’t find as much information. People’s education will decline. A world without libraries? Well the world will be upside down!”

3) “Libraries still teach and educate people. They hold reading classes, English as a Second Language groups, they organize various book related activities for children, invite famous authors to give speeches, lend us audio and videotapes, help us look for a job, and finally, conduct a research. Can you imagine something like this happening in the world without libraries? ‘Excuse me,’ said one gentleman, ‘Is there any chance you have change for a dollar?’ ‘What? I have no nothing,’ a stranger screamed back. What have we become? Do we know how to use proper grammar and correct English? Why don’t we ask the librarians, listen to them speak beautiful English while they are answering our questions. Have you ever met a librarian whose language skills you did not like or who was not able to tell you all about the subjects ranging from classics to modern literature? What would happen to these well-educated, well-read people if we closed our libraries? It would be like losing a hand.”

4) “I love reading and without libraries I would be super bored. Libraries connect us to books. Life would be horrible without libraries.”

5) “Close your eyes. Imagine you are walking through New York City. You see many empty lots say ‘Lot for rent’ or ‘Century 21 is going to be here.’ You were going to the library to get a book on plate tectonics when it hits you…NO LIBRARIES! We would have no places where you could just get in the zone and read. When you are going to a library, you are always welcome. You are away from all the city hustle and bustle madness. You are CALM. They always said ‘Silence is golden.'”

6) “At the library you can find anything from aardvark to zebu. When you are there and reading you are holding a work of art in your hands. You can feel the authors presence telling you the story. Wouldn’t Benjamin Franklin be upset if there were no libraries and he worked so hard on inventing them?”

7) “Libraries make people feel at home. When I first moved to New York City, coming from a more rural area of New York, everything was very confusing and weird but the library was something I had seen before.”

8) “They say everyone smiles in the same language. If this is true then everyone is speaking in the same language when they visit a library.”

9) “Libraries make the world go round. They keep the little sanity we have left here.”

And finally,

10) “The world without libraries is like a cone without ice cream.”

And these were only some of the great things the kids wrote about libraries. When all the finalists came to my branch to get their awards from the City Council and read their essays out loud in front of their proud parents, I was blown away (and often moved to tears – what can I say, I’m a big sap) by how much the library has meant to them so far in their lives. So there you have it, folks. Listen to the children!

You Might Also Like

Essay on If There Were No Examination

Students are often asked to write an essay on If There Were No Examination in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on If There Were No Examination

Introduction.

Imagine a world without exams. We often view examinations as a means of assessing our knowledge. But what if they didn’t exist?

Learning Experience

Without exams, learning could become more enjoyable. Students might focus on understanding rather than memorizing facts for tests.

Practical Knowledge

In the absence of exams, practical knowledge might gain importance. Students could learn through projects and real-life experiences.

Personal Development

Without the pressure of exams, students could develop other skills. They could explore their interests and talents in various fields.

Life without exams may seem strange, but it could lead to a more holistic education.

Also check:

• Paragraph on If There Were No Examination

250 Words Essay on If There Were No Examination

Examinations have long been the standard method for assessing a student’s knowledge. However, it’s worth considering the implications of a world without examinations.

Theoretical Freedom

In the absence of examinations, students would be free from the pressure of rote memorization and excessive competition. Education would shift focus towards understanding concepts, fostering creativity, and developing critical thinking skills. This could potentially lead to a more holistic and meaningful learning experience.

Practical Challenges

However, without exams, educators would face the challenge of implementing alternative forms of assessment. Continuous assessment methods such as project work, presentations, and group discussions would gain prominence. These methods, while fostering collaborative learning, could also present logistical difficulties and subjectivity in grading.

Impact on Motivation

Examinations, despite their flaws, provide a clear goal and a sense of urgency that can motivate students to study. Without exams, some students might lack the incentive to engage with their studies, leading to a decline in academic diligence.

While a world without examinations appears liberating, it also presents significant challenges. The key lies in balancing traditional examination methods with alternative forms of assessment to create a more flexible, inclusive, and comprehensive education system.

500 Words Essay on If There Were No Examination

In an educational system where examinations are the primary means of evaluation, it is intriguing to envisage a world without them. Examinations have been a fundamental part of our education system for centuries, designed to measure a student’s knowledge and understanding of subjects. However, the concept of a world without examinations begs the question of how learning would be assessed and how knowledge would be measured.

The Concept of Learning without Examinations

If examinations ceased to exist, the traditional concept of learning would undergo a significant transformation. Learning would no longer be confined to textbooks and rote memorization but would instead be characterized by understanding, critical thinking, and the application of knowledge. Without the pressure of examinations, students could focus on comprehending the subject matter thoroughly, fostering a genuine love for learning.

Practical Application and Skills Development

In the absence of examinations, practical application and skills development would take center stage. Students would be encouraged to apply their knowledge to real-life situations, thereby gaining hands-on experience. This shift in focus would enhance their problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making skills. The education system would become more skills-oriented, preparing students for real-world challenges.

Continuous Assessment

Without examinations, continuous assessment would become the primary method of evaluation. Teachers would evaluate students based on their participation in class, projects, assignments, and presentations. This method would provide a more holistic view of a student’s abilities, taking into account their creativity, communication skills, and understanding of the subject matter.

Emotional Well-being

Examinations often cause stress and anxiety among students. If there were no examinations, students would be relieved from this psychological burden. They could learn at their own pace and in their own style, promoting mental health and well-being. Education would become a more enjoyable and enriching experience, rather than a source of stress.

While the idea of a world without examinations may seem radical, it presents numerous potential benefits. It could revolutionize the learning process, shifting the focus from rote memorization to understanding and practical application. It could foster skills development, promote continuous assessment, and improve the emotional well-being of students. However, it is essential to remember that any changes to the current system must be implemented thoughtfully and gradually to ensure that they effectively meet the needs of students. A world without examinations could be a reality, but it requires careful planning, preparation, and execution.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on How to Overcome Exam Fear
• Essay on Exam Stress
• Essay on Exam Fear

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Website Inauguration Function.
• Vocational Placement Cell Inauguration
• Media Coverage.
• Certificate & Recommendations
• Privacy Policy
• Science Project Metric
• Social Studies 8 Class
• Computer Fundamentals
• Introduction to C++
• Programming Methodology
• Programming in C++
• Data structures
• Boolean Algebra
• Object Oriented Concepts
• Database Management Systems
• Open Source Software
• Operating System
• PHP Tutorials
• Earth Science
• Physical Science
• Sets & Functions
• Coordinate Geometry
• Mathematical Reasoning
• Statics and Probability
• Accountancy
• Business Studies
• Political Science
• English (Sr. Secondary)

Hindi (Sr. Secondary)

• Punjab (Sr. Secondary)
• Accountancy and Auditing
• Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology
• Automobile Technology
• Electrical Technology
• Electronics Technology
• Hotel Management and Catering Technology
• IT Application
• Marketing and Salesmanship
• Office Secretaryship
• Stenography
• Hindi Essays
• English Essays

Letter Writing

• Shorthand Dictation

Essay on “If there were No Electricity” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

If there were No Electricity

In modern life, we have got so habituated to the use of electricity that we do not want a moment of life without electricity.

Needless to say, the discoverer of electricity was evidently one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. Now, it will be a horrendous time for all of us if something miraculous happens such that the earth is denuded of the blind energy of electricity.

Of course, in such an eventuality, the loss will be tremendous and even incalculable. It may not be easy to surmise exactly the real discomfort caused to all of us.

If there were no electricity, there would be no electric light, no electric fans, desert coolers or air conditioners, no refrigerators, no mixers no juicers, no heaters, no geysers, no printing presses, virtually no books, no magazines, no newspapers, etc.

Certain industries such as textile, sugar, steel, cement, TV, computer, auto parts, and other industries might not exist without electricity. Even tube well, water pumps, geysers, etc. would have to be run by diesel, petrol, or gas. That would be a costly affair.

Total darkness could provide a hey time to thieves and robbers. Indeed, modern life is impossible without electricity.

If There Were No Electricity

Electricity is the biggest boon to mankind. We cannot perceive a world without electricity. We have become used to the comforts provided by electricity. Even at the basic level, we need fans, bulbs, and heaters in our houses.

To say that we Indians do not know what it would be like in the absence of electricity would be wrong. Frequent power cuts and blackouts have given us the experience of life without electricity. Our helplessness during such periods makes us feel frustrated. In the absence of electricity, we are unable to perform our duties to the fullest.

In the absence of electricity, most of our domestic appliances would not work. Our fans, food processors, tube lights, bulbs, electric irons, would come to a grinding halt. Our industries are heavily dependent on electricity. They would stop functioning. Total industrial production of the country would stop. We will have to do without paper, soaps, clothes and various other objects. Electricity runs our petrol pumps, and various public service institutions like hospitals, railways, etc. In its absence, there will be total chaos. Public and private places would wear a deserted look. Our world will plunge into darkness. People will once again have to learn to live an arduous life.

Our channels of entertainment are completely dependent upon electricity. We would have to live without our daily television, films, videos, and cassette players.

Returning to the dark ages where no comforts of today exist is one of our greatest fears. In order to be free from this fear, we must take urgent measures like the conservation of forests, and our water resources. We mold make careful use of electricity and avoid any wastage. It is only after taking such precautionary measures that we can hope to avoid a future full of darkness.

About evirtualguru_ajaygour

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Quick Links

Popular Tags

Visitors question & answer.

• Gangadhar Singh on Essay on “A Journey in a Crowded Train” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
• Hemashree on Hindi Essay on “Charitra Bal”, “चरित्र बल” Complete Hindi Essay, Paragraph, Speech for Class 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 Students.
• S.J Roy on Letter to the editor of a daily newspaper, about the misuse and poor maintenance of a public park in your area.
• ashutosh jaju on Essay on “If there were No Sun” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
• Unknown on Essay on “A Visit to A Hill Station” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Download Our Educational Android Apps

Latest Desk

• Role of the Indian Youth | Social Issue Essay, Article, Paragraph for Class 12, Graduation and Competitive Examination.
• Students and Politics | Social Issue Essay, Article, Paragraph for Class 12, Graduation and Competitive Examination.
• Menace of Drug Addiction | Social Issue Essay, Article, Paragraph for Class 12, Graduation and Competitive Examination.
• How to Contain Terrorism | Social Issue Essay, Article, Paragraph for Class 12, Graduation and Competitive Examination.
• Sanskrit Diwas “संस्कृत दिवस” Hindi Nibandh, Essay for Class 9, 10 and 12 Students.
• Nagrik Suraksha Diwas – 6 December “नागरिक सुरक्षा दिवस – 6 दिसम्बर” Hindi Nibandh, Essay for Class 9, 10 and 12 Students.
• Jhanda Diwas – 25 November “झण्डा दिवस – 25 नवम्बर” Hindi Nibandh, Essay for Class 9, 10 and 12 Students.
• NCC Diwas – 28 November “एन.सी.सी. दिवस – 28 नवम्बर” Hindi Nibandh, Essay for Class 9, 10 and 12 Students.
• Example Letter regarding election victory.
• Example Letter regarding the award of a Ph.D.
• Example Letter regarding the birth of a child.
• Example Letter regarding going abroad.
• Letter regarding the publishing of a Novel.

Vocational Edu.

• English Shorthand Dictation “East and Dwellings” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Haryana General Sales Tax Act” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Deal with Export of Goods” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Interpreting a State Law” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.

• Descriptive
• Imagination
• My Favourite
• Famous Personality

If there was no rain essay in English.

Hello friends, if there was no rain is so strange imagination isn't it?. Today Essay For Students has come up with an essay on what if there was no rain, in this essay we have discussed what will happen and how it will affect us if there is no rain.

If there was no Rain.

It was raining very heavily and I was getting ready for school. Like daily in our home news channel was played on TV and that time I came to know that due to heavy rains water has been filled everywhere and there is a flood-like situation because of which all the schools have declared holiday due to rains.

As the school declared a holiday I was very happy. But later I saw the news which showed the destruction caused by the rain. The rain had caused massive destruction of life and property I was just shocked watching that new, at that time a thought came to my mind what if there was no rain!.

If there is no rain then there will be no problems. There will be no floods and no property will be destroyed. People will live happily without rain but....!.

If there is no rain then from where will we get water?. Without rainwater, the water from the ponds and rivers will get empty and the aquatic animals will get extinct. Not only that every living being will die without water.

Around us, we can see the greenery, which trees spread and they give us fresh air to breathe and healthy food to eat, but if there is no rain then all the trees will get dry and they will start dying. All the beautiful environment which we see will be turned into the desert and it will look like endless land made up of sand.

If rain doesn't shower on earth then we will never get the fragrance of the soil nor we will be able to get wet in the first rain. We children cannot enjoy it without this rain.

Without rain, we cannot do farming and cultivate food on earth, and the end result is we will not get food to eat. Without rain, life is not possible.

It is true that rain causes loss of life and property but we humans are also responsible for it. Because as we have created the concert jungles water doesn't get the place to sweep into the ground, and in cities, water has no place to flow out which results in floods and causes destruction. If there is rain there is life.

Friends, what do you think what will happen if there are no rains? do tell us by your comment below.

This essay on if there is no rain can be used by students of class 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th for there educational purpose. This essay can be also used on the topics given below.

• If there were no rain.
• If there was no water.
• Earth without the rain.

Friends, did you liked this essay? and if you want an essay on any topic the let us know by commenting below.

You may like these posts

Post a comment.

How I spend my summer vacation

Thank you :), we will also bring essay on this topic very soon.

Thank you we are happy that you liked this essay :)

Amazing ❤️ thank you so much

Can I have an essay about no rain no flowers

• Autobiography 8
• Descriptive 235
• Educational 68
• Experience 60
• Famous personality 27
• Festivals 16
• Imagination 10
• My favourite 27
• Pollution 6
• Spiritual 3

Menu Footer Widget