Nearly 65 years ago, my father, Gerard Previn Meyer, wrote a book called Pioneers of the Press. The publisher was Rand McNally, and the book, republished in paperback as a Fawcett Publications’ “Student Edition,” was translated and reprinted in several languages and distributed abroad by the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). In 1999, during the Clinton administration, the USIA was subsumed by the State Department, along with the Voice of America. This year, President Trump, by executive order, abolished the agency and fired virtually all of its employees, whose mission it was to further democracy abroad.

At the time my father’s book appeared, the McCarthy era — with its red-baiting and blacklisting — was basically over, and an attractive young president was ushering in a “New Frontier” with all the aspiration and inspiration it promised to bring. “Uncle Walter” Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, and Howard K. Smith from the three major networks brought us the news, as did several top newspapers. The Civil Rights Movement was just beginning to stir but was not yet fully stirring. The worst was yet to come, but who knew or could predict it at this dawn of a hopeful new era?

I was just 19. No wonder they called us the Silent Generation.

The somewhat snazzier paperback cover of my father’s book virtually shouted: “The story of the fearless MEN who risked PRISON, RUIN and even DEATH to establish a FREE PRESS in Colonial America.”

The stated purpose of America’s first newspaper, Public Occurrences, published on September 25, 1690, was “That people everywhere may better understand the circumstances of publick affairs.” The book’s back jacket goes on to explain that, four days later, “all copies of the paper had been burned, [publisher] Ben Harris was facing a Colonial tribunal, and the free press of America had suffered its first defeat. But the idea of an independent newspaper could not be destroyed, and before long there was another courageous editor, another and yet another, all of whom fought for the right to print the truth as they saw it.”

My father then wrote:

“To GENE and DEBBY, my son and daughter, and their generation, pioneers of the future, I dedicate this tale of pioneers of the American press who helped to form the great tradition of freedom and truth which they now proudly inherit.”

Currently, when the truth is derided as “fake news” and publishers cower before a wannabe king, Pioneers of the Press couldn’t be more timely. Sadly, it’s no longer in print, and only a few pages are available on the nonprofit Internet Archive. But the book should be required reading for all Americans (and on every public school reading list) as an apt reminder of why what we journalists do — when we act with courage and conviction — matters for everyone, now more than ever.

[Editor’s note: This piece is adapted from a post that recently ran on Eugene L. Meyer’s blog.]

Eugene L. Meyer, a member of the board of the Independent, is a journalist and author of, among other books, Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army and Hidden Maryland: In Search of America in Miniature. Meyer has been featured in the Biographers International Organization’s podcast series.