I really enjoyed the Thursday night chamber of commerce after hours, and Friday’s open house, because that gave me a chance to meet so many of you folks in the community, and to chat with others I had already met.
Taking some of you on tours was really fun, and the reaction on those tours was almost universal: “I had no idea there was so much here,” is what most of you said upon seeing the newsroom, and advertising, and creative services, and then the giant press in the back portion of the building.
There is a lot here, but more than computers and film processors and printing plants, there is history here. The same could be said for many businesses and organizations in Mount Airy and Surry County, although I’m not sure there are many as old as The News.
A community newspaper has a unique presence in a community. It’s not like other businesses or organizations. A jewelry story or grocery store, for instance, keeps track of how it’s doing and its competitors, but beyond that doesn’t really have to be involved in the rest of the community.
Yes, our area is blessed with a number of businesses that take an active role in the community, but each one has its place, its core of interest, that it must attend to above all else.
A community newspaper is different. Yes, we’re a business. We have to keep track of expenses and revenue. And as an ongoing business we have to maintain at least some level of profit, or we’re not around too long.
But, in a very real sense, our business is the community. We report on other businesses, we take pictures of people and what they do every day, we keep track of what the schools and governments are doing.
I know I’ve shared this story before, but I still recall my first full-time newspaper job at The Times-Virginian, a little weekly in Appomottax, Va. We would put in a 15- or 16-hour day on Monday, finishing up stories, developing film and laying out the newspaper. In those days, we still printed the stories on regular paper, then cut them into columns and ran them through a waxer to paste the stories down on a layout sheet.
We would be back around 8 o’clock the next morning, finishing up and sending the paper off to the printer. Three or four hours later, it would return. We’d unload it, put the ad circulars inside, then label and bag the papers and send them out to the post office.
I still recall people from all over town walking up, trying to give us their quarter to get the paper as we unloaded it from the truck, even before the ad circulars were inserted. That was their community newspaper, and they wanted it hot off the press!
I’ve felt that same sense of community here, at The Mount Airy News, especially over these past two days. So many of you told me stories of reading the newspaper for 30, 40, even 50 years, of heading to the end of your driveway first thing in the morning to get your paper, or putting it aside to read first thing when you arrive home after work.
Some of you shared with me memories of stories you’ve seen in The Mount Airy News over the years, or you told me about someone you knew who worked here 10 or 20 years ago.
And through all of those conversations it was clear to me, The Mount Airy News is an integral part of your life every day.
I could given you two dozen reasons I do this type of work, and quite frankly I might give you different reasons on different days, depending upon what’s going on. But in the end, hearing so many of you, seeing you come here, talking with even more of you in the community over the past year that I have been editor, understanding that this newspaper is part of your life, and my work in some small way is a service to this community — that is why I do this work.
John Peters is editor of The Mount Airy News. He can be reached at jpeters@mtairynews.com or 719-1931.
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