Front-porch News
My first job was as a cub reporter in a pack of ten journalists at the Gilroy Dispatch in California. The paper came out three times a week. The town was the “garlic capital of the world,” with farmers and farmworkers, blue-collar workers, and the rare commuter. I covered school board politics, fatal crashes on the highway south, whatever was needed.
My colleagues loomed as large as the tomato trucks rolling down the 101. They were like a troupe in a loud Steinbeck novel, yoked to one little room. Every phone call was in your ear. Cigarette smoke reached eye level by noon. It was hot. We sweated through it. All that energy went toward Gilroy—honoring it, laughing about it, keeping it honest. I wasn’t born to be a newsman, it turned out, but I loved being part of that group. They were part of their community, played softball with the people they wrote about. The news they brought their neighbors served as glue.
On page 104, we publish the chronicle of the final days of a paper in Warroad, Minnesota, just the kind of outlet a small town needs. Its police blotter report included everyone, no exceptions—not even when the editor drove drunk. Now, in one more place, that accountability is gone. About 2,000 U.S. papers have closed since 2004.
I assumed the same had happened in Gilroy. But the Dispatch is alive! Editor Erik Chalhoub told me that he’s undaunted, though the editorial staff is down to four to put out the Dispatch and two other nearby papers. The Dispatch owns its own building, prints every Friday, and, with a couple of online stories a day, “is on top of what people want to read about.”
“Gilroy still feels like a small town,” he said, both bringing me up to speed and making me smile. “The people here care for their paper.” Not that you need my encouragement, but I hope we all do that for our humble local papers—before we miss them because they’re gone.