I turned 27 last week. Birthdays make you do math you’d otherwise avoid and here’s the number that stopped me cold: I’ve been publisher of this newspaper for a little over two years, which means I’ve spent almost 10% of my existence in this chair.
Ten percent of a life. That’s not a job anymore. This is a chapter. Maybe an act, containing multiple chapters. Maybe, when it’s all over, any honest reading of my biography will be intrinsically tied to the pages of this storied newspaper, my years measured out in editions, my time on earth filed away in an archive that smells like old books.
If there’s still an archive. If there’s still a paper. Newspapers die every day in this country. Older ones, richer ones, in bigger towns, gone without warning. Nobody can promise how long this one lasts. We are, all of us, writing a record with no guarantee anyone keeps it.
And yet, isn’t that just the human condition with a masthead on it? None of us knows how many editions we get. We publish anyway. Every week this paper goes to press is a wager that these towns’ stories are worth telling even if the telling ends. The school board meetings, the obituaries, the angry letters matter not because they’re permanent but precisely because nothing is.
I didn’t plan to spend my mid-twenties this way. Most days I can’t tell if I’m building something that will outlive me or lovingly tending a dream that will be nothing more than a fun fact told by me at stuffy dinner parties in my later years. I’ve decided it doesn’t change much. You show up. You do your best. You send it to press.
Here’s to my 10% and whatever percent comes after that. Thank you everyone for reading and helping us tell the stories of our communities.
