ROCKWOOD, Tenn. (AP) – Roxie McClendon gets her news from visitors to the retirement home or from phone calls, then passes it along in her column in the weekly Rockwood Times.

She’s been writing her regular society column since she was 75 – not a bad run, since she turned 103 last month.

McClendon is an institution in this east Tennessee town of about 5,700. Like other small-town columnists, she writes about the social lives of everyday people in her community – their out-of-town guests, family reunions and Sunday dinners.

No one keeps an exact count of how many society columns still exist, but they appear to be dwindling, along with detailed wedding and birth announcements. The shift to a faster-paced, online news environment is believed to play a role, as is the passing of a graying generation of society mavens.

“There is no one like Miss Roxie. There is no one in the community that people would accept and know like Miss Roxie. She’s just a force out there,” said editor Terri Likens of the Roane County News, which publishes the Rockwood paper.

Many columnists have deep roots in their towns and have been writing for many years – but probably not as long as Mary Peyton Meyer, who celebrated her 100th birthday Dec. 31. This is her 85th consecutive year covering Frogtown for The Leader-Union in Vandalia, Ill., about 65 miles east of St. Louis.

Once a teacher in a one-room school, Meyer started writing for the paper when she was in high school. She even appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson.

“It’s just the basics,” publisher Dave Bell said. “It’s like the old quilting-bee kind of news where you just catch up with people through conversations.”

Meyer began a recent column by reporting the appointment of an organist at St. Peter Church. She also noted a community fundraiser, a Valentine’s Day dinner and the details of a 7-year-old’s birthday party.

“Miss Lydia Rose Taylor of Kinmundy was honored on her January 15 birthday with a luncheon at the home of Richard and Ruth Williams of Farina,” Meyer wrote, in an intimacy familiar to regular readers. “Due to illness, Don and Denise Webb kept little Eli Montgomery. Mike and Jo Williams had delivered cake and a gift before leaving on Saturday to visit Andrew, Mindy and Max Collmeyer in Waterloo. Lydia enjoyed opening her gifts, even though not feeling so well that day.”

Studies have shown readers are still keen on local news such as obituaries, which some papers have moved to more prominent sections, said Brad Dennison, editorial vice president for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., a newspaper chain based in Birmingham, Ala.

“We sort of lost touch that people really wanted that, and for local community newspapers that’s absolutely our niche,” he said.

Many large daily papers have society columns that run on Sundays, but those usually focus on the upper crust, featuring famous names and high-society events.

Meyer and McClendon focus on the smaller routines of daily life. They both live in retirement homes and have some help with their columns. Meyer writes in longhand and has a friend deliver it to the newspaper. McClendon no longer turns in handwritten columns. She gathers the news and reports it to her granddaughter Kim Jones, who usually types the column and e-mails it to the newspaper.

Finding news is still easy for McClendon, who once had a friend tell her, “You’ve lived so long, everyone knows you!” Her 103rd birthday was the highlight of a recent column.

“I don’t have a lot of news since this past week has been rather busy for me,” she wrote. “My great-niece, Tina Crisp, had put in the paper about how I did not want my family to go to the trouble of having me a party for my 103rd birthday and to shower me with cards. I’m not bragging, I’m just thankful that I have received over 300 cards. Some from people that I didn’t even know!”

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