It was a compelling story and inspired dreams of investigative reporting that would expose corruption and lead to a better world. My reality remained more in the world of community journalism, however. I never was much of an “investigative” reporter, but I was good at explaining and describing events, whether it was a school board meeting, a high school football game or a murder trial.
My newspaper career started at a small newspaper in Sunbury, Pa., along the Susquehanna River about 50 miles north of Harrisburg. Along with the usual meetings, police reports, fires and accidents, reporters at small newspapers spend a fair amount of time writing about and taking pictures of community events, festivals, carnivals, graduations, school plays and all manner of “non” newsy stuff.
A former colleague, John L. Moore (@johnleonmoore), reminded me the other day how important the coverage of those small events can be to the people who are involved. John, who was my city editor and managing editor at The Daily Item, still lives in Northumberland, a town across the North Branch of the Susquehanna from Sunbury, He attended a viewing for a neighbor a few weeks ago and sent me a note to tell me about a photograph he noticed among a group of pictures of the deceased.
It was a newspaper clipping of a photo taken in the late ’70s. It showed John’s neighbor helping to set up the King Street Park for Northumberland’s annual Pineknotter Days festival. The photographer? Me.
When John first wrote me about it, I joked that I hoped it was better than most of the photos I took for The Daily Item. In those days, we reporters carried cameras, too. John very kindly wrote back that “The photo was a very nice shot of two people — one was my neighbor — setting up a pole for a booth. The picture gave a clear view of the faces. I can see why somebody clipped & saved it.”
John’s note touched me in a way I would have never expected 35 years ago, when I probably grumbled that the assignment wasn’t “real” journalism. Now I find myself grateful that I captured an image, a moment, that somehow represented something important in this person’s life.
I used to tell people that the journalism we did at small newspapers was just as important to our community as the journalism the New York Times did for its community. I was right, but I didn’t understand why until now.