What does your newspaper mean to you? Go ahead, get it out of your system. We’ve heard them all, from “It used to be a fishwrapper, now it’s only big enough for sardines” to “It’s a left-wing rag” and oddly enough, sometimes with regard to the same story or editorial, “It’s a right-wing mouthpiece.”

Would your life be better without the people who give you the story instead of soundbites? Would you be happier with no news, to be unaware of government, special events, sports, education advancements or failures, columns, features and lists of everything from crime to places to go, things to do, people to see?

And opinions — we can’t forget opinions. Maybe ours aren’t always to your liking, but that’s the beauty of a newspaper. If you disagree with our views, we offer you the space (for free, no less) to express your own.

Sometimes we wonder what a community that had nothing but information passed through word of mouth would be like. Would you like to live in a place where there is no newspaper, only gossip and innuendo to mistakenly depend on, what one hears at the grocery store instead of what is substantiated? What kind of community would that be?

Certainly not one that could see itself honestly or make its way through repairing its faults while also celebrating its strengths.

Without a newspaper, would we grow complacent and insulated from our fellow man, dismissive of our schools, what our public officials do (or don’t do that they should), who’s running for office and what they stand for?

Without a newspaper, would we forget that there is a world outside of our town or our state, that people everywhere have the same worries, the same woes, yet the same reasons to be grateful as we do?

Today begins National Newspaper Week, sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America since 1940. Each state chooses its own theme. In South Carolina, the theme is “Newspapers … still going strong.” Despite what you might read (on our own site, no less, in story comments; how’s that for fair?), newspapers aren’t dead yet.

Newspapers have had a tough time of it in the last few years, with economic downturns in our own business, impacted as we are by hard times of our advertisers. But you still get your newspaper every day because we are tenacious. We don’t give up. We care about the communities we serve and we’re not going to go away quietly, despite what some of our Web “fans” might fantasize.

Putting out a daily newspaper and offering even more than our page count will allow on our Web site is hard. We make mistakes. We take them harder than you do. But we’re human. Like the late, great Lewis Grizzard once said, in response to a reader who complained about a typo in his column: “We put out the equivalent of a small novel every day. What do you want for 50 cents?”

All jokes notwithstanding, we take our work seriously, and try to do it responsibly. Criticize us if we make a mistake of fact, but make no mistake about this fact: We don’t do what we do because of the financial rewards (they’re nothing out of the ordinary), the immense respect and adoration we receive (oh, please) or the fame (another oh, please here).

We do it because it needs doing. Because people need to know what’s going on around them. Because we care about where we live. And because somebody has to be willing to give the bad news along with the good, the unpopular opinion along with the party line.

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, one of the most talented writers of current days, wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 2006:

“If the complexity of the real world offends you, fret not. You can escape the MSM (mainstream media) and find comfort zones for all the livelong day that offer little or nothing to contradict your most cherished prejudices, preconceptions or paranoia.” But still …

Newspapers … still going strong.

Despite the odds.

Despite the criticism.

And despite the blisters on both hands from hanging in there.