Opinion | Bearing witness to the bare facts

In truth, no matter how gadgetly advanced we get, there will never be a serious substitute for a daily newspaper. Fact is, the publication is a constant and reliable companion that can be read and reread. It is the quiet comfort which compliments your morning beverage.

Your paper fills scrap books and noticeboards as it bears witness to happenings both consequential and trivial and is always relevant. It represents your life in all its renditions from politics, sport and culture, as well as the varied opinions presented by real people in real time. Contributors are all familiar names and faces whom you invite daily into your domain.

A day without your paper is a day lived in a vacuum. The Witnessturns 180 years of age this week. Imagine, in this turbulent world we live, what a plethora of information has adorned the pages six days a week for nigh on two centuries.

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Editors, journalists and reporters have come and gone. Others, have almost miraculously appeared to immediately fill the void, and, as a result, the news continues to be published, unstoppable in its quest to report, educate and entertain. In the “back room”, squadrons of people plan, set and check each edition in its creation and presentation and accordingly, ensure its final delivery to you, the news hungry reader.

The activity behind your daily fix can be likened to an army on a permanent war footing. The watch-word is “deadline”, which is sacrosanct and cast in stone. Two years after the establishment ofThe Witness(1846), Karl Marx published The Communist Manifesto — which he did in London, not Moscow.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species. The Witnesshad a field day with that, thrilling their readers on their road to self-discovery. Wars have been fought, leaders have risen and fallen and history, a work in progress, is continually on the move and the world, our country and our province morphs this way and that like a slalom skier.

Your paper bears witness to it all. Indeed, snippets of news appear on our devices all day — and as quickly disappear to be replaced by more, but your paper remains as a solid dependable continuum of tangible explanations of the world with all its shenanigans and glory.

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