Closing the time needed to cross those empty spaces

Iowans didn't learn of the Civil War's start - the April 14, 1861, Fort Sumter attack - until April 18, 1861. Imagine not hearing about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, or that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, until four days later.

These days, journalists hold vigils near deathbeds, waiting to send the quickest report live via satellite or to post immediately on the Internet. Newsmen must fill the seemingly long gaps between turning points in an event, their broadcasts like a walk across an empty field. Those who tune in only hope to catch the reporter as he's reached a fenceline where his direction must change.

***

Back in Civil War days, three ways of spreading news, gossip and the latest New York City fashions dominated.

It might be carried by foot. This included delivery of the newspaper, a postal letter or simple word of mouth.

Or the news might come via telegraph, which was fairly instant between sender and receiver, but then all of us had to wait for the receiver to distribute the news.

There also was the train, if you were near a station, that is. While not a communication tool, it mechanically quickened how soon that postal letter or word of mouth might travel from one town to the next.

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Pioneer accounts are filled with the joys of receiving a letter from distant family or an old friend. People poured over newspapers word for word. But newspapers were different then; in small towns across the nation they told of who visited whom for dinner and what each attendee wore at the last elegant ball. It's not that there wasn't "news" to report - it's that other things mattered more than they do now.

Readers simply were trying to fill empty places.

Imagine a life where for most hours of the day the only thing in sight other than family was a field stretching into the horizon. The bleakness must have grown crushing in autumn when only the yellowed stubble showed, then almost unbearable in January as snow gripped the land, the wind lifting ice particles off it as if sand curling a shifting dune. During the day, only the chimney smoke of distant farmhouses offered a break in the expanse; at night, only a pinpoint of light remained.

Those lights might as well have been stars.

***

We couldn't literally close the empty space those fields created, but we decreased the time needed to cross them.

Radio and telephone came first. Though instant in transmission, they remained incomplete - unlike a newspaper or magazine, there are no pictures. But the sound of another's voice carried so clearly across the wind remains comforting yet today.

Television followed a generation later. It offered instant news with pictures. Less than two decades later, cable allowed a wider range of topics to be discussed for more hours of the day. But television is like shouting across the field to a mute - we know he sees and hears us, but there can be no response.

The Internet arrived half a generation after cable. It now instantly brings to audiences those items that are too insignificant for television to cover. It gives all of us megaphones to shout at one another across the field.

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These days, the speed of communication increases not with every generation but several times intragenerationally.

No less than 10 years ago, readers had to wait a full 24 hours for their newspaper to be updated. As around the clock television threatened to make them obsolete, newspapers even in the smallest Midwest towns created Web sites, updated regularly to bring news to audiences. While that has been going for a few years with wire stories on national, world and sporting events, many papers these days now also provide local news updates every few hours.

What impact does this have upon our lives? Perhaps a society once starved for information has too much of it. But the issue doesn't seem to be quantity so much as quality. We may be bombarded with reports on the latest celebrity murder trial and what someone thinks of 50 Cent's chart topper, but what about the stuff that really matters?

And just what is that stuff?

I pose this test: Would we cross a field to tell someone else about it?

(originally published April 17, 2005)