By now you’ve heard the news.

Newspapers from the Pacific Ocean coastline of California to mountain-man living environments of West Virginia have been beset by the economy. The newspaper industry is not unlike other businesses in that sense.Us newspapers collectively hurt when you hurt.But I’m going to let you in on some insider information. Community newspapers nationwide, like your Sylvania Telephone, have not been knocked down the financial hill to the extent of the major metro papers.The Telephone has more than held its own because of the wise choices of a hard-working staff, but more so because of the continuous support of readers such as yourself. Sylvania’s newspaper has been publishing Screven County news for 130 years to the members of this community and the multitude who have come before you.With that said, allow me to address the State of Newspapers in the United States – in a way, however, differently than other pundits. Sadly, I must admit that some newspapers have not been able to stay afloat. It has even spawned the Web site www.newspaperdeathwatch.com.Dating back to the creation of the site in March 2007, newspapers are listed who have closed. The site also has generated failure time bombs in its “Works in Progress.”Maybe Ted Turner sneakily created the site behind the scenes. The multi-billionaire said newspapers would die in 10 years. But Ted’s prognostication was off. He made that prediction in 1981.“If newspapers die, what will I kill spiders with?” comedian Stephen Colbert posted May 12 on Twitter.That Stephen is a good question. Yes, some newspapers could not financially make it, but for all those who could not, many others have concocted modes of survival, and, in some cases, modes of success.Stephen, not only are newspapers good for swatting an occasional eight-legged creepy crawly web master, they also are good for movies. Lots and lots of movies.Without newspapers how would we become better informed of the fate of a flight like the one from Los Angeles to Chicago in the 1980 comedic stroke of genius “Airplane!” With all the pilots sick from airline food, a passenger has to take over the controls to land the plane. Down on the ground, airport officials “Rex Kramer,” played by Robert Stack, “Steve McCroskey” (Lloyd Bridges), and “Johnny” (Stephen Stucker) each read a newspaper headline and pass the paper on to the next.Kramer: “Passengers certain to die!”
McCroskey: “Airline negligent.”
Johnny: “There’s a sale at Penney’s!”Several of the most incredible movies of all time were ones about newspapers. It would be absurd to believe that any fantastic films are going to be made about Internet bloggers. 

There’s no chance watching a movie with a reporter skadoodling the Web for tidbits would be anywhere as impressive as “All the President’s Men” when now renown Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are pushed to go through countless index cards in the Library of Congress while a camera pulls back to display the dynamic duo in an incredibly massive room.

The 1930s alone had enough news reporter movies to fill all the pressroom ink barrels at the Los Angeles Times. Back then virtually every actor who could spew forth back-to-back competent sentences was given a stylish fedora and a press card to shove in his hatband.Remember “Citizen Kane?” That was not only a phenomenal newspaper movie. Movie buffs and critics nationwide view the 1941 flick as one of the five greatest movies of all time. Period. “Charles Foster Kane,” modeled after William Randolph Hearst and other early moguls, builds his media empire with determination and idealism, just to lose it in the pursuit of fame and power. “I don’t know how to run a newspaper, Mr. Thatcher. I just try everything I can think of,” Kane says.If that isn’t a quote indicative of how to navigate the world of journalism, I don’t know what is. How about “His Girl Friday” which pitted Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in a fast-paced battle of the sexes. The 1942 Oscar-winning “Woman of the Year” was the first of the celebrated Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy films as two were sparring columnists from the same newspaper. Hard-nosed city editor Clark Gable hooks up with Doris Day in the 1958 movie “Teacher’s Pet.”

“Absence of Malice” with Sally Field and Paul Newman is a suspenseful exploration into the ethics of newspapers.

In “The Pelican Brief,” a law student played by Julia Roberts finds evidence that high government officials conspired to assassinate two Supreme Court justices. So she seeks help from an investigative reporter played by Denzel Washington.

One of my personal favorites, the 1994 “The Paper,” has Michael Keaton’s character digging up a hot news story as he considers a job offer from a bigger competing newspaper that should better the lives of him and his pregnant wife Marisa Tomei. It would be better at least on “paper,” pun intended.

And don’t forget “The Year of Living Dangerously,” “It Happened One Night,” “Ace in the Hole,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” “Superman,” “The Killing Fields,” “Fletch,” “Philadelphia Story,” “Newsies,” “Zodiac,” “Spider-man” and “Never Been Kissed.”

In a December 1974 episode of the television show M*A*S*H, a Luxembourg soldier thought to be dead receives a memorial service, but the soldier was actually still among the living and joins the mourners by saluting his own dead self. Seeing this, “Hawkeye” says to “Trapper,” “I thought you said he was dead?” to which “Trapper” replies, “He got better.”

Newspapers are not dead. They aren’t on life-support either. Newspaper readership across the nation has hit record highs and no better source of accurate news reporting exists.

“Erica Stone,” played by Doris Day in the movie “Teacher’s Pet:” “Newspapers can’t compete in reporting what happened any more, but they can and should tell the public why it happened.”

And that they do and will continue to do.  Enoch Autry is the publisher-editor of the Sylvania Telephone.