The phone rings early on Monday.
It's a woman wanting to know why "Masterpiece Theatre" wasn't on the night before. It was supposed to be the third installment of "Pride and Prejudice" and it wasn't there.
We get such calls all the time and I think it's great. It tells me that a lot of people look to us as a sort of information clearinghouse.
Many people don't have Internet access, or if they do, some find it easier to call us. So they phone with questions about this and that; we even have Yvonne Haywood, in our circulation department, whose job includes handling various reader inquiries.
I get calls all the time from (mostly) women who planned to save a recipe from the Food section and then it's gone. Frequently, they have already bought the ingredients from memory and so are in dire need of it. Most often, the culprit is a husband who took the papers for recycling before the wife could clip it out.
Being an avid cook myself, I know how frustrating it is to not to find a recipe you need, so am glad when I can track it down.
But for some people, we come to mind first when they have a beef with a business or government service.
People contact us when they grow an oversized gourd, or want to know how to get rid of fruit flies or how a game turned out.
I hope that never changes. I like the idea that a newspaper remains a focal point in people's minds.
This especially hit me when I had a turn at delivering papers a year ago last summer. It was what would have been a banner Sunday for us circulation-wise: Cherry Festival weekend, falling on the 4th of July, Blue Angels in town.
Well, for us, everything that could go wrong did and the paper didn't get printed until hours after it should have. While our drivers, who are right up there among the unsung heroes in this whole process of getting the paper out, had been waiting all night, some had other jobs or commitments and had to go. I was here that morning, so around noon when people were mobilizing to deliver the rest of the papers, joined in.
With a co-worker's daughter riding shotgun, we got to a local neighborhood. Some people were sitting on the porch waiting. A few said they'd been worried, their day doesn't start without the paper. Nearly all were nice -- many seemed relieved.
As for "Masterpiece Theatre," I didn't know why it wasn't on. I checked the schedule CMU sends every week and told her that it should have been, and gave her their number.
It think it's part of what we can do as a newspaper -- as part of the community.
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