Twenty years down, maybe five more to goDate: 11/12/2019 Time is fleeting isn’t it? On Nov. 10, 1999 I started working with this organization as the editor and lead writer of The Chicopee Herald.
The 20 years since then have flown by with increasing velocity and a dizzying number of changes.
When I started I worked out of an office on Center Street. While the internet was certainly important it had not yet reached the deep significance it has today. People frequently walked in with press releases or to chat. We had a typist on our staff to deal with all of the material that came in through the mail or the fax.
Now the amount of mail has decreased quite a bit and faxes, well, what the heck is a fax? The typist position has long since been eliminated.
When I started I was both amazed and horrified that we put the newspaper together with 1980s technology. We assembled mechanicals – large sheets of cardboard on which we pasted the stories and photos.
The pieces of paper were run through a waxer, which was a device that rolled molten wax onto the paper as the adhesive. At the end of the process, you had to run a roller over the mechanical to make sure all of the pieces of paper were adhering properly.
Yikes, what a hideous process. Every layout day the aroma of hot wax was everywhere. I was so glad when we started laying everything out digitally.
We moved the office to a building on Front Street not far from the new library. In April 2004 we closed that office and consolidated all of our staff in an enlarged building here in East Longmeadow. I do miss the storefront and what it represented in terms of ground-level journalism.
During this 20-year-period we have launched quite a number of new publications. Some have been successes – Go Local for one – and some have not. It’s difficult to know what will succeed and every time something didn’t make it we all felt badly.
The rise in importance of websites was something that deserved increasing attention and worry. We were slow to have an effective news website like many newspapers and are trying to catch up.
My boss initially was Chris Buendo, and several years later, the reporting lines changed and my supervisor became Dan Buendo. I appreciate the fact that they hired me and appreciate it even more that they didn’t fire me. They were good-natured enough to allow me to call them The Flying Buendo Brothers in print.
They allowed me to be managing editor for most of the time I was in their employ. I decided I would try to avoid acting in the manner I had been treated by other editors under whom I worked at other newspapers. I’ve worked for some pips. No, I’m not naming names.
I realized early on that a weekly community newspaper assumes an underdog position in a media landscape with daily papers, TV and radio. I relish being the underdog. It makes me work harder and makes me want to give our readers something they don’t get from the “bigger” media.
Now, we are “bigger” media with one daily, two paid weeklies, two monthly magazines and four free home delivered weeklies. Those four free weeklies alone reach more than 180,000 readers every week.
Print is clearly not dead here.
I still consider myself an underdog, though. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I have been privileged to have worked with some excellent journalists, some of whom I feel actually became friends.
When the Buendo Brothers sold the company, frankly, I thought I was done. I was too old and too much a competitor. I was shocked that I wasn’t fired immediately and stunned that my new boss, Fran Smith, saw value in my efforts. Since the summer of 2018 when the company changed hands we have seen a period of growth that has been heartening to say the least.
So, I need to thank my long-suffering wife, Mary, who has endured my odd schedule for that last 20 years. I must thank staff members and colleagues. We have a lot of talent here at this company. I deeply appreciate each and every reader, even those who tell me how wrong I am. I thank public relations people with many of whom it has been a pleasure to work. I thank my boss Fran Smith for keeping me on and for having printer’s ink in his veins.
While I know I don’t have another 20 years here – or anywhere else – I think my end date with the company will be in five years. Of course there are many factors that might alter that idea. If I win Powerball, all bets are off.
Since that is unlikely, though, I’ll see you next week.
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