Free Cabin Fever by Janet Sanders Page B

Duane asked, shaking his hand dismissively. “If I had sold more papers five years ago, maybe that would have made a difference. Now I’m so deep in the hole I know I’m not getting out again.”
    “So what will you do?”
    “Oh, I’ll shut it down.” He looked around the office, and from the distant look in his eyes Sarah could tell that he was seeing things that weren’t there anymore: a bustling office filled with staff members working on the next edition of the paper.  
    “You sound sad,” Sarah said, feeling a little sad herself. She was surprised at her reaction; what was this place to her? It was just a tiny little newspaper in a tiny little town, no different from the innumerable other small papers throughout the country. But still, now that she knew Duane and was beginning to know some of the other people in Tall Pines, it was beginning to feel personal to her.  
    “I feel relieved mostly,” he answered, his attention returning to her and the present day. “Regretful, too, when I’m being honest with myself. Maybe if I had done things differently it would have turned out better. Back when things were going good, I knew that I’d retire one day, of course, and I always just assumed that there would be someone who would take over from me. Now, though, the newspaper staff is me. I’m the only one who cares anymore. And soon no one will care, me included.”
    “How soon?”
    “A few months maybe. Or a few weeks. I really don’t know. Every morning I roll out of bed and ask my aching joints whether they want to get up, get dressed, and head into the office. So far the answer has been yes, though I can’t say I’ve been very enthusiastic about it for quite some time now. Eventually the answer will be no, and then I’ll be done. I’m not planning to be sentimental about it. I won’t throw a party for myself, or come out with some self-pitying final edition of the paper. I’ll just stop, and then we’ll see if anyone cares. Of course I want them to care. I want them to come to me with tears in their eyes, lamenting the fact that they didn’t support the paper when I needed them to. But it’s more likely that they’ll just turn on their computer screens and head over to some website that will give them the news with prettier pictures than I could ever put in the paper. It won’t be exactly the same, but it will be good enough, and it will be free. It’s hard to compete with free. I’ve struggled to compete with it for years. But not much longer.”
    Sarah shook her head. “That’s a shame. It’s important for a town to have its own paper. CNN may tell you what’s going on in national or world news, but it doesn’t build community in a place like this. It doesn’t help women like Winnie find their lost dogs. It will be a terrible shame when the paper isn’t around anymore.”
    Duane shrugged. He looked tired. “It may be, but it’s been a long time coming. The newspaper business just doesn’t make sense anymore, and most people aren’t as stubborn as me. They moved on, and I didn’t want to. Eventually a man doesn’t have a choice.”
    Sarah chatted with him for a few more minutes, working out the details of the interview piece she was to submit by the end of the week. Duane rummaged through some papers until he came up with the phone number of the football player’s father, and Sarah promised to call him the next day. All the while, though, her mind was on a different question: was there something that she could do about the newspaper?
    She left the offices thinking about the question. She walked down Tall Pine’s streets pondering the question. She looked at it every way she could think of, and she kept coming back to the same answer: she had money put away, enough to take the newspaper on and keep it running for a while, but it wasn’t enough to make a difference. If she burned through her savings, maybe she could put the paper out for another couple years. She had no