Do you find yourself sometimes stumbling across a piece of writing, educational material or an article that just leaps out at you? Just a few words can trigger a flood of different thoughts and emotions in each of us, and when I found this piece it just hit me with it’s truthfulness. Check out the link above to soak up their reflections on community having a voice. I’ve included here a couple of paragraphs that really stood out in highlighting the sometimes overlooked value of people, connections and stories.
Quote: "It’s not their fault, really. These reporters—smart, thoughtful individuals whose work we respect and value—just don’t have the kind of deep understanding of this community that Tim Fitzpatrick recalls as central to his experience working at The Vindicator in the 1980s. During that difficult period, when thousands of local workers were losing their jobs, Fitzpatrick found that working for a local paper gave him an incredible “sense of connection to the history of Youngstown and belonging to something bigger."
Quote: "The closing of The Vindicator will also cut future historians off from this community’s story. When we were researching our book on Youngstown, we spent hours reading old issues of the paper, devouring its meticulous coverage of the September 1977 announcement of the first major steel mill was closing. Where national papers devoted a few column inches to the news, The Vindicator interviewed dozens of workers, local officials, small business owners, ministers, and others, documenting the immediate response in a way that neither an outside journalist nor a historian conducting interviews even a few years later could have. This is the kind of reporting that only a local newspaper—and local reporters—will do; only they have the connections and commitment to the community to make it happen."
As I’ve thought so often before when observing closures and endings of companies or local establishments, I can’t help but wonder much we might end up missing connections to our roots, stories of the past and celebration of the present. Maybe it’s worth our time to think carefully about preserving what we have now.
Images via The Vindicator's Facebook Page
