No Dinosaurs

You can't keep a good man down. And in this case, it's a couple. Tom and Anita Baker, the grand force behind The Times for 27 years from 1964 to 1991, showed up briefly at the annual convention of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association in Yakima last Thursday.

Their presence at the opening reception delighted the attendees, and for good reason. During their many years at The Times and beyond, they were as grand a force in the WNPA as they were in the Waitsburg community. And even now, well into their retirement, they remain involved in an industry they love as much as it loves them, making a significant contribution as newspaper historians.

The association of publishers is a century and a quarter old this year. In 1887, Charles Hobart, the editor and publisher of the Yakima Republic, proposed that a newspaper association be established in Tacoma at the opening of the Northern Pacific railroad across the Cascades.

"Prior to July 4, 1887, eastern and western Washington were prac- tically separated from each other by the Cascade range of mountains - an impregnable barrier extending through it in an unbroken chain from north to South," according to Marion Egbert of the Walla Walla Journal, the first secretary of the Washington Press Association.

At the 1887 meeting in Tacoma, nine men representing seven newspapers, elected officers and appointed a bylaws committee for review at a meeting to be held in Yakima the following October.

"The citizens of Yakima gave the association a royal entertain- ment, including a fine banquet," Egbert continued. "Thus closed organization [sic] and first annual meeting of the Washington Press Association."

In its first 125 years, the state industry group has seen it all, and despite reports to the contrary, its members are doing just fine, thank you very much. In the face of cyber competition, metropolitan dailies are struggling to survive, but the smaller community newspapers are holding their own because no one in their markets can replace their reliable news-gathering operation. Of course, even newspapers like ours can't succeed unless they get with the times. That means being online, being on Facebook, going where their readers are going, yet retaining a presence in print for those who prefer holding the news in their hands.

To quote Mark Twain: Reports of our death have been highly exaggerated. Radio was supposed to make newspapers obsolete, then television, then cable, then the web. Yet we're still here, providing news and information readers can't get anywhere else and offering visibility to advertisers that will endure the competition.

The Bakers served many roles in the WNPA. Tom Baker was its president in 1986 and its secretary and treasurer at different times and Anita was always right there with him.

"It was a great association to serve because it was predominantly made up of independent publishers who were the epitome of the Horatio Alger model," Tom Baker wrote in the special WNPA history tabloid to which he and Anita contributed the year-by-year timeline and several articles.

"After all is said and done, I cannot think of any other profession I might have chosen that would have been more personally satisfying and brought me into the company of the most fascinating people on earth," Tom concluded in a piece headlined "Past Inklings."

This publisher, serving as a WNPA trustee at least through 2014, and his team are just as committed to support our industry group as the Bakers, though we have big shoes to fill following in Tom and Anita's footsteps. Just like the Bakers, we feel it is personally and professionally satisfying. We learn how to get with the times, to improve as journalists, to better serve our advertisers and to generate the best product, embracing new technologies and sustaining the best traditions in honest, timely news coverage.

As the best indication of the pursuit of these goals, we proudly return from this year's convention with a WNPA Better Newspaper Contest Second Place Award in the "Best Long News Story" category for "It Kept Going And Going," a 2011 Times report on the pot bust in Columbia County, the largest illegal marijuana find in the state that year. Entries in the WNPA's annual "Better Newspaper Contest" are subjected to the toughest scrutiny and standards in the industry. To ensure objectivity, WNPA submits this state's entries to judges in another state and returns the favor. This year, newspapers in the state of New York selected the winners in Washington and we're honored to be recognized by them for our in-depth reporting.