Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Archive for November 5th, 2008

Tonight you were part of history

4 comments November 5th, 2008

Tonight as the newsroom quieted down, settling into the last hour of detailed work before the press start, I shared with them this note. It’s for them, and it’s personal. I wanted you to share it, as well.

Tonight you were part of history…

Every 100 years or so, a wrenching shift in generational history takes place. The last one came in the late 1920s, and the world that followed was different. Tonight marks another such before-and-after. Coupled with the tectonic shifts in the global economy and the world’s unrest, Barack Obama’s presidency will create the environment in which a new world will grow. We can choose to create the new world of hope that Obama so eloquently challenges us to become; we can choose to do otherwise. May we choose wisely.

I watched you tonight, each of you in this newsroom who did what needed doing, who rose successfully to master a hundred headaches, almost disasters and assorted profanity-inspiring glitches. You worked as a team. You came in on your days off, stayed late, came back, and connected yourselves to what journalists have done since we drew stick figures on cave walls: We told the stories of a people.

Today and tonight you told that story well. You served almost 300,000 people in the Rock River Valley. You did important work that cannot be replaced by a technology, a widget or some “user generated content” provider. You worked with integrity, accuracy, credibility and you maintained the trust between us and our readers. We in this News Tower have done this so many times before. We told the stories of space shuttles, of tornadoes and NIU campus killings. Of elections in 2000 so close we couldn’t call them. Of World Trade Centers and wars in Vietnam. Of Nixon and 25 percent unemployment. Of children dancing on stage at the Coronado. Of weddings and funerals. Of state titles in sports. We tell the stories that make the muscle of who we are, of who our readers are.

For me, for the “old” ones in this room, we have been here in the Tower through so many of them. Tonight, though, is different. Tonight is a before-and-after moment. I am humbled that I could share it with you, with a newsroom that knows in its soul — from our most senior staff to our youngest — that we do more than a job. We do the right thing. I am proud of you. Godspeed.