I was the managing editor of Stars and Stripes newspaper from 2001 until 2009.

I worked at five newspapers during my journalism career and have always told people the most important paper in the world, is S&S. It was also one of the very best things about America.

1/13

Imagine a newspaper being partly funding by the Pentagon having the editorial independence to report ON the Pentagon?

2/13

I remember explaining this to a group of Macedonian public affairs officers in a meeting in our then European Headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany. At one point the leader of the group stopped me cold and said, “This could never work.”

But it did.

3/13

S&S has served the military and its dependents overseas for decades through war and peace.
We prided ourselves on telling the stories about the military FOR the military because we understood these readers better than anybody else.
I was once a reader myself.

4/13

Our staff was made up of civilian, military and host-nation journalists all with one mission: Getting it right for our troops and their families.

5/13

And our reporters and editors were with these troops downrange and at sea while our soldiers, sailors and Marines fought to protect the United States of America alongside our allies. It was dangerous and necessary work.

6/13

S&S is known as a non-appropriated fund activity. In other words, it took money from the Pentagon to supplement its budget and the monies it made through advertising. There was never a way to make it self-sufficient because of its circulation route.

7/13

I can tell you there is no other daily paper in the world that is delivered to Fallujah, Iraq, all the way to the DMZ in South Korea!

But it was.

8/13

I remember it costing taxpayers about $17 million annually to produce. Seems a pretty small price to pay for keeping the best among us informed.

9/13

I don’t know what possible good could come from shutting this vital newspaper down, so I’ll close with this: In the early days of the War in Iraq it was clear our troops needed better equipment and support.

10/13

IEDs were ripping through our armored military vehicles and our troops didn’t feel as if they were being heard. Needless to say, morale was low. So our reporters canvassed Iraq and did a series called “Ground Truth: Voices on the Ground.” https://www.stripes.com/news/voices-on-the-ground-stars-and-stripes-surveys-troops-on-morale-in-iraq-1.12779

11/13

This got a lot of attention back home, but nobody picked up on it faster than a Senator by the name of John McCain. During hearings on the war efforts, the Senator held up our report and said, “The Stars and Stripes is an important newspaper and we MUST listen to them.”

12/13

Why in the world would we stop listening to them now?

-END