I wanted to take this opportunity today to make sure you know that The Evening Sun still takes part in the ancient newspaper custom of social announcements – you know, births, engagements and weddings (although preferably not in that order, but I try not to judge).

Social announcements are a tried-and-true staple of community journalism, and a centerpiece of many a family scrapbook. Back in the day, we published pretty near an entire page of these announcements every Thursday – now, we’re down to once a month, if that.

I’m not sure why that is really, except to conjecture that Facebook’s immediacy has taken the place of a static print record of major family events (here’s where I’m guilty of joining my whiny newspaper brethren by blaming everything on Facebook, I suppose). Which is too bad, really, because although that online photo album will get a lot of hits, there’s nothing to guarantee that it will be preserved for all eternity, if even in the form of a yellowing newspaper clipping.

Although we don’t seem to get as many as we used to, we still do publish announcements of births, engagements and weddings – for free. Maybe that’s what’s holding people back from entering these events into the public record? Again, folks, it’s free!

There was a time (pre-1996, in fact) before HIPAA laws went into effect that Chenango Memorial provided us with a daily listing of admissions, discharges and births. It was quite a popular item, appearing along with the obits and police blotter on the “For the Record” page. As the police reporter at the time, it was my duty to trudge up to the hospital every day and get them (yes, in a time before e-mail). That was the usual way couples got the news of their bouncy bundles of joy printed in the newspaper, and it worked for years. Somewhere, I have a brittle copy of my own. But then we got all concerned about privacy and that practice stopped.