Steve Lundeberg

For the last 10 years, one of my favorite tasks here at the Democrat-Herald has been proofing the News of Record.

Known in our newsroom slang as NOR — which we either pronounce as the initials or as a word that rhymes with door — News of Record is a compilation of actions in Linn and Benton county circuit courts. From 1990-99, when I worked in the sports department, I never paid much attention to NOR, but after I switched to the news side, it grabbed my attention — I’ve always been drawn to lists of names — and, well, never let go of it.

That’s how I became the designated NOR proofer; unlike most people, I found it fascinating reading for the most part.

At least I did until Nov. 13, when we published our last installment of NOR. The budget ax claimed it (although in fairness to the paper, the outside contractor who compiled the info is getting on in years and will soon retire, and no replacement was in sight).

So I have saved the Nov. 13 paper as a souvenir of NOR, a “souve-NOR” if you will (city editor Karen Petersen thought that was pretty funny).

A few final thoughts on NOR (unless, of course, I feel like writing about it again sometime):

Reading through the meth convictions was tiresome, but thankfully they seem to have gone down a lot over the last decade; appears the Sudafed restrictions the pharmaceutical industry fought against for so long are actually working.

Really, the criminal stuff in general was never my favorite, especially when, as happened a few times, I ran across kids I used to coach being arrested or convicted for something; I realize their wrongdoing is not my fault, but I did feel a certain sense of failure every time one of them turned up in NOR that way.

Mainly, besides looking for errors to fix of course, I’d read through the criminal cases and the lawsuits just to see if there was anything in there we needed to be reporting on in a larger way; like, for example, if an elected official had been convicted or sentenced.

My favorite part of NOR was the marriage applications, and my second favorite was the marriage dissolutions. I often knew people in both sections, and it was interesting (and usually uplifting) to see who was headed toward matrimony and interesting (and usually sad) to see who was calling it quits.

So farewell to you, NOR. We had a great decade together, and I look forward to proofing you again someday in that Great Newsroom in the Sky.

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