YARBROUGH: Local newspapers provide information that empowers us
Dick Yarbrough  Dick Yarbrough   This is a special group of
people, as is their work. Newspaper publishers manage a business
that is more than a business. Their product is information and
in a democracy it is information that keeps us free. There is an
old adage that says if I know something and don't tell you, I
have the power. If I tell you, I transfer that power to you.
Newspapers transfer power from the powerful to We the People.
Our government -- yours and mine -- will go to extraordinary
lengths to hide information from us; information that we have a
right to see because it is our hard-earned tax dollars it is
spending. The newspapers are there to see that conducting the
public's business behind closed-doors is the exception and not
the rule. If newspapers did not, who would?  Thomas Jefferson
said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesit