End Of An Era, Saying Goodbye to The Community Press
During the early days of our marriage, Rebecca and struggled a bit financially. We married young, and thought we could take on the world with our combined retail and teacher salaries. When we had our first child, we had to make an important financial and developmental decision for our family. We decided that daycare was not only too expensive, but that we wanted to raise our kids ourselves day to day. That meant me working part time at Apple evenings and weekends. The drop in salary wasn’t as much as day care would have cost but it did make things tight. My mother in law noticed that The Community Press, the local neighborhood newspapers were looking for freelancers. I tossed my hat in the ring and spent the next decade or so covering high school sports for the Press.
Now, several years after I stopped freelancing, the print editions of these remaining newspapers are coming to an end effectively ending the era of local and hyperlocal print journalism in the Cincinnati region.
No, no the irony that a person who hates sports spent nearly a decade writing about them is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that I am blogging about the end of local print newspapers. But here we are.
Mark Motz, known around my house as “Uncle Mark” (he’s the uncle on one of my son’s grade school buddies) was my first editor. I had tossed my name in the hat for freelancers and Mark took a chance on me. Now, I did not attend journalism school. I had actually planned to be a teacher until I did my first round of student teaching and realized that it was NOT for me. I did write for The Northerner, the student run paper at NKU, while I was in college, but that was the extent of my writing experience at the time. I finished my degree in English and do what all English majors do, continued my retail career. But eventually I started writing fairly regularly for the Press.
For my first assignment Mark sent me out on a boat. Really. Ben Quisno of Loveland was looking to break into pro bass fishing. So, I jumped on his boat and we went fishing. The story was printed and Mark kept giving me assignments. As did Dick Maloney and Melanie Laughman. I wrote hundreds of stories, mostly recaps of football games, and fall sports previews. It wasn’t all recaps and box scores. I was able to interview an Indian Hill kicker who never missed a field goal as he persevered after his father’s unexpected death. I wrote about my nephew’s t-ball team. And covered McNicholas High Schools district baseball championship, long before my kids ever thought of going there.
I’d go on to write for The Amazing Colossal Website, Choremonster, and various personal blogs. All now defunct. lol.
Eventually, both of my kids started school and I returned to full-time work. Eventually landing a gig as a full time writer at a local non-profit.
Many years later the circle continued as both of my kids became junior carriers delivering The Forest Hills Journal in our neighborhood. You think you get to know who your neighbors really are when the political signs go up? You should see how adults treat small children collecting $2.00 a month for a newspaper. (Spoiler alert-we’re in trouble, folks.) Eventually the junior carrier program was eliminated and now…the community papers have been eliminated.
It’s sad beyond being a veteran of writing for the paper, I was also a fan. I liked the local coverage of events in my neighborhood written by folks who lived there. It seemed genuine though a bit old fashioned. The contraction of the newspaper world has been tough to watch-many of those writers headed to other news organizations, but many headed into marketing and social media. I think its unfortunate that these papers are going away. Local news is important and having someone report on issues that affect you and your neighbors is too. I’m fortunate to have had these experiences and look back on this time fondly. RIP The Community Press.
