“Change is inevitable and you won’t like it.”

That’s a saying I developed as I experienced the world changing at an accelerated rate, while I could not keep up.

One change is occurring in the media. When I first became a freelance journalist almost 60 years ago, people mostly got their news from the print press and network television. Everything I wrote or scripted for broadcast passed under the eyes of an editor.

Now, the favored “news” source is social media, where unedited opinion is passed off as fact. The media is mistrusted by many people if it reports facts that clash with their opinions. They flee from the facts; truly “fake news” becomes news. They ignore documented opinion essays, preferring heated assertions and bitter attacks.

The traditional media focuses increasingly on local news, reporting facts that affect everyday lives. Newspapers and television seek to survive by covering important local stories that are relatively immune from the ideological wars. While I regret the inevitable change in the media as I knew it, I recognize that the survival of responsible news organizations is at stake.

This change in the media now means that my column no longer has a place in this newspaper. There were seven dailies in Maine, and I wrote for most of them on major issues affecting Mainers and other Americans. The Times Record is the last. I have almost completed my 13th year of producing a column every week in this paper. But change is inevitable.

If there is a single theme that I want to leave, it is that the United States was created and governed through much of its history by a continuing process of compromise. A vast republic can only function in the broad public interest if its leaders seek common ground.

The people best suited to compromise are not career politicians but citizens doing public service. They must be freed from the corruption of political money as a condition of that service.

Over the past 30 years, this country has become increasingly divided, with its leaders seeking power for its own sake and caring too little about people’s lives. Perhaps government and leaders of all political parties, like the media, should focus more on the local, individual impact of their policies and not on their own power.

I have come to see that the best politics may amount to reviving the concept of government providing the greatest good to the greatest number. Coupled with a revival of the essential American belief in individual rights and neighborly respect, this formula could be the way ahead.

In departing, I thank the readers and The Times Record editors with whom I have worked. I continue to write on substack.com. You can continue reading my essays, either by subscribing by searching for my name on that website or by sending me an email at weil.gordon@gmail.com, and I can add you. I hope you will keep reading.

Thank you.

Gordon L. Weil formerly wrote for the Washington Post and other newspapers, served on the U.S. Senate and EU staffs, headed Maine state agencies and was a Harpswell selectman.