Thank you and see you later
This is my last issue of The Charlotte News. and I’m grateful for all the support and kind words I’ve received for the past two years from everyone who loved the paper and what I was trying to do here.
Letter from the Editor
What remains With a little fewer than 4,000 people living in our town, I would say those numbers are…
Nothing more
I know I have mentioned this in several different ways since I arrived back here a few months ago, but I wanted to make some things clear, believing that there are readers who harbor misconceptions about the nature of the operations of The News. As has been made abundantly clear by our recent celebratory “ads,” the paper was founded 60 years ago in the basement of the Congregational Church by several enterprising teenagers and the indefatigable Nancy Wood. This newspaper is a nonprofit enterprise, relying on advertising dollars and fundraising efforts to keep the presses rolling. Almost all of the contributors—writers and photographers—do so without compensation, and the staff members receive salaries that would probably make you laugh.
All the difference
I spent all last week at Fordham University where I am finishing up a degree in pastoral care. I took a class in pastoral counseling skills, and though most of the classes for this degree have been online, this one had an on-campus requirement. I lived in a dorm for the week, which was both peaceful and horrible, monastic-like and, well, suffice it to say I don’t miss that particular aspect of college life at all.
Old Home Day reflection
It’s 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, Mother’s Day, at the old Baptist Church in East Charlotte. The wide-pine floorboards creak and crack as I retrieve my second cup of coffee. The stained glass windows glow with references to the Greek alphabet in mottled yellows, greens and blues. A few early birds are running laps from the newly pruned apple trees to the feeders. My fiancée, the lovely Britta Johnson, rightly asks what I’m doing up so early.
To err may be human, but not so forgivable in journalism
When I saw the misspelling on the cover of the last issue of the paper my stomach started to hurt and didn’t stop for the rest of the day. Sure, we were under the gun because of the timing of Town Meeting and the push-back of the deadline—the need to get the paper to the printer that afternoon—still, it was sloppy work and there is no excuse for it.