OutTakes
Commentary by Edd Merritt,
October 6, 2011, page 14.....

What did you learn from the news today?

Daily News, daily blues
Pick up a copy anytime you choose
Seven little pennies in the newsboy’s hand
And you ride right along to never, never land. . .
-Tom Paxton

So, what do we call our town these days? Is it “Charburg” or maybe “Hineslotte?”

Picking up our weekly newspaper competition last week it was hard to tell. In the newly named Citizen, Hinesburg took front stage, which prompted me to page through the paper to see what had changed. It wasn’t until I completed my perusal that I noticed the new masthead and realized that we, The Charlotte News, were in competition with news from two towns instead of one.

The Citizen – “Weekly News Coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg” – had accomplished what school voters hadn’t, creating a new district.

I think it is indicative of the identity crisis that newspapers in general are undergoing. Similar to school boards, news media are trying to figure out their purpose and the best way to convey that to the reading public. Sometimes, determining the nature of that public is debatable – one town, two towns, regions, daily readers, weekly readers, old or young, businesses?
And, perhaps the overarching question, who pays the paper’s bills?

My own move into journalism as a retirement job did not prove to be as simple and straightforward as I had anticipated. But, that’s half the fun of the profession.
I began working with The Charlotte News about 12 years ago. After writing a couple of articles for the paper, I was asked to become its managing editor – talk about an operation in dire straits.

Early in that position I was concerned that there would not be enough news or stories generated about Charlotte to fill the 20-24 pages we printed each issue. My fear was unfounded. This town of over 3,500 people was full of stories. People with fascinating backgrounds were happy to write about their fields of interest and their experiences. If we had trouble filling the written space, my photographer colleague, Peter Coleman, was ready to set the town, its people and its vistas, at his lens’ mercy.

The paper was affiliated with the Charlotte Congregational Church then, having begun as a youth group project some 45 years earlier. Under the Church’s tax-exempt status, the Board of Directors included representatives from the church. Free Press correspondent Dorothy Pellett filled that responsibility for a number of years.

At that time the paper was housed in the church vestry. Then, printing was done mechanically rather than digitally. We pasted up copy to send to the printer for reproduction. (In point of fact, the first paper I remember was actually mimeographed, and held together with a staple.)

Technology has simplified production, but the content remains focused on Charlotte. We’ve added a website, improved our color reproduction and found new writers, photographers and editor/proof readers.
Evolution has been fun. Incoming editors bring ideas for change and for creative ways to focus on parts of the Charlotte community that deserve expanded coverage.

From its inception, the paper chose not to take an editorial stance, but rather to use our commentary section for the publication of ideas and beliefs from various members of the community. We’ve sometimes been called to task for this approach but hold fast to it – even under threats of litigation.

Personally, my work on The News has forced me to gain knowledge about parts of Charlotte that I probably would not have otherwise, and as a retirement job, I recommend it highly to all “fogies” reaching that juncture in their lives.

I am happy to leave the task of generating publishing revenue in the hands of others. When I was the managing editor that became one of my main jobs, but not one I relished. I do, however, believe the potential loss of advertising revenue was a major reason that The Citizen came into existence. The Charlotte News dropped out of the Burlington Area News Group (BANG) when we realized it was not cost-effective for us. Charlotte has a wealthy population but is business-poor. The Williston-based Citizen wanted to keep our audience. Moreover, BANG paid individual papers extra for generating ads from their local businesses, and Williston has numerous businesses, as does Shelburne where the Citizen is located now.

I believe I’ve come to appreciate learning within this job. Something I discovered through my writing is the importance of knowing your audience. Phyllis Lary, a tremendously astute woman who was a News proof reader, would ask me periodically, “What, exactly are you saying here? This is how I read it. Is that your intention?”
She was very kind, but honest to the point of being blunt in her criticism. Her questions made me take a second look at the sentence or paragraph or word and ask myself whether it meant the same to me as it would to my readers. When I found myself shortsighted, I would change it to be meaningful to the reader. Phyl, bless her soul, always asked first, changed later.
Fluency in communication, no matter what the medium, is essential to society. We learn by it. We teach by it. Some of us live by it. I hope its power and nuance, that tell us so much about ourselves and our worlds, don’t fade with rapid changes in technology. If they do, maybe music will fill in. Maybe we will have that “close encounter of the third kind.”

I dig it . . . culture needs a melody and tonal quality to build character, but, above all, it needs a good drummer to keep its beat.