Growing in La Conner together

“It’s my paper now, but I am only borrowing it.” That line led my second essay entrant last August in pursuit of winning the Hardwick Gazette, a 128-year-old paper in the heart of Vermont. That essay sums up why I am here and what I—with your participation—hope to do in La Conner over the next 10 or so years.

My goal is to follow in Cindy and Sandy’s footsteps and manage the paper’s contributors so the Weekly News is annually an award winning newspaper. The paper succeeds in part because of their participation. The paper succeeds in part because the community supports it, not only by reading and subscribing, but by providing tips for possible articles and by discussing, advancing, championing, criticizing, and disagreeing with what is written. Your advertising in the paper is critical to its success, also.

A weekly paper has been published continuously in La Conner since 1873. Cindy and Sandy created a legacy by pulling the Channel Town Press out of, well, the channel, and starting and sustaining the Weekly News.

My responsibility is to pass that legacy on to the next generation. I do that by developing robust, digital, multi- social media platforms to fully reach out to 21st century readers of the News. And I do that by betting on the kids, as I put it in my contest essay, printed in today’s edition. These editorials, this one real, last year’s imagined, begin to give you an idea of my vision and goals for the Weekly News.

School staff are reading my vision here for the first time. With their agreement and participation students can become cub reporters. That is my hope. Like with everything else, discussion is needed.

A friend offered advice before I left Cincinnati: “develop your exit strategy early.” I replied that I had conceived it a year ago. Maybe I will learn differently here, but I have been reading newspapers and following the news for over 40 years. The only way I can project a viable news media and vibrant citizenry in our democracy is by inviting our kids to participate and mentoring and encouraging them to poke around and ask critical questions. This is also a path for a vital future La Conner, with your children returning after college—or staying—to work and raise their families here.

Owning a newspaper is a cross between real estate agent boosterism and hardboiled detective cynicism: you love the community and want it to succeed, but for the common good you have to find out where the bodies are buried. In other words, the good is lifted up and encouraged, and you speak truth to power against the bad, shining a light on wrong. Communities have a wide mixture of people making good and poor choices.

We need to communicate, be in relationship, share, and help one another. Or, we are smaller for isolating ourselves. I want the paper to be a forum for communicating, relationship building, and sharing. I will be taking this message out to you.

I am looking forward to meeting and hearing from you your visions of community and moving together into an ever more complex and uncertain future. Changes, big and small are coming to our coast and our planet. How will we deal with change in our corner of the world?

I am betting my future on the La Conner Weekly News being a part of helping us all figure out our sustainable future.