“The Start of a Love Affair” was the headline on the op-ed column appearing in August 1976.
It was the first I’d written for this newspaper as a 24-year-old cub reporter who expected to last just a couple of years at this newspaper where typewriters still clattered in a busy newsroom toward an 11 a.m. deadline and where cars gathered in the rear lot each afternoon as drivers loaded newspapers for delivery to the hilltowns.
It seemed a more relaxed era where traditions were deeply rooted, but I was excited to hit the ground running, even before I could figure out where I was headed.
That visceral connection between stories I’d get assigned to write starting at 7:30 a.m. and papers read in Franklin County homes that afternoon and evening is what drew me in and assured I’d stick around not two, but 42 years.
Over that time, the technology changed, the faces changed and maybe even the news changed. Almost from my first week as West County reporter, I watched people come and go from the newsroom, and half a dozen publishers and nearly as many editors join us and then move on.
Sometimes, I also got the itch to move on, but was reminded time and again that community journalism offers something special that glitzier media can’t hold a candle to. And when I did leave briefly, I came back because there simply wasn’t the same sense of connection at a larger paper, or anyplace that seemed quite as much like home.
If I’ve learned anything from my years at The Recorder, which ended appropriately enough on Valentine’s Day, it’s that community journalism truly is more than black and white, and that those connections in a small, enlightened community like Franklin County offer a wealth of experience that can’t be replicated in a larger setting.
Around here, I found, quality of life truly matters more than the quantity of life we are led to believe is the be-all and end-all. The connections we make day in, day out just interacting with neighbors, I realized, can truly ground us. And the collaborations that are so pervasive in Franklin County are an integral part of what holds the community together and makes this seeming backwater uncommonly special.
The scale of the landscape, as the great Conway poet laureate Archibald MacLeish himself commented, as well as the rhythm of life by our nurturing farmers and and the creative involvement of ordinary folks, is grounding for our daily lives.
I’ve learned that the stories we tell about community truly matter, and can often inspire us toward positive action. As I wrote them for four decades — including The Recorder’s annual Citizen of the Year profiles — I learned we have genuine heroes in our midst.
Their conviction and creative action encourages many to do likewise, whether in fighting opioid addiction, racism, nuclear proliferation or climate change or building a better society by working on community justice solutions or helping people re-entering society after incarceration.
For years, people who asked me to simply identify my “beat” were told that it was a mix of everything. That’s because I was just as inspired by the daily feats of farmers working to eke out a living from the soil as I was the restorative justice panels offering alternative, community-centered ways of dealing with people who’ve made some bad decisions, or the regional Council of Governments’ approach to addressing problems common in our towns.
Taken together, Franklin County – maybe in part because it truly is off the beaten path – is an outstanding home for a core of people whose innovative, open-minded ideas are downright inspiring.
My initial thought when I arrived was that this would be a great place to grow — and to help my children do as well . Writing about it, living here and thinking a great deal about this place have never led me to believe otherwise.
Recently retired, Richie Davis was a writer and editor for more than 40 years at The Recorder. His website is RichieDavis.Net