I’ve been an #enemyofthepeople, apparently, since at least ninth grade world history class.
The teacher, Mr. Corbin, would start class with a question about current events. Inevitably, I was the kid who knew the answer.
A kid in the back – these kinds of kids always sit in the back – figured it out a few weeks in.
“That kid knows the answers because he’s always watching the news,” was the observation.
I’d always thought I’d end up in the law, but first semester of law school disabused me of that notion. The law was way, way, way too dry for me.
I was accepted into an MFA creative writing program, but had to wait until the fall of the next academic year to begin the program.
The local newspaper, The News Virginian, was running an ad for a part-time sportswriter job. The pay was awful – $15 a game – but it was a chance to write while waiting for the fall to come.
I took the job, and never made it to the MFA program.
A few months in, I talked my way into taking the open government reporter job at the paper. I was still able to do sports in the evenings on the side. I was 23, had no social life, had no problem working day and night, and weekends.
I covered city council meetings, high school football, wrote feature stories, led an investigative-reporting project that won a state press association award.
My annual salary at the five-year mark: $19,200.
I met my future wife there. Crystal Graham was a features writer and layout editor. Our combined skills, plus a wanderlust for striking out on our own, led to the launch of Augusta Free Press, in 2002.
Our goal at the launch was to use the website to build a buzz toward the eventual founding of a weekly newspaper, the thinking being, this web thing is fine, but we need to be in print to be able to make an impact.
Still covering city council meetings and football games, now diving into social issues. In 2005, as the push was beginning toward a 2006 statewide referendum banning gay marriage, we decided to take a stand, and put together a package of stories featuring interviews with local gay and lesbian couples, chronicling their struggles against a system that treated them like third-class citizens.
I remember thinking when we hit the publish button, OK, this is it, our advertisers are going to flee, our reader base being in this most conservative of conservative areas.
To my surprise, and delight, not a single ad pull, not a single negative comment.
We devoted a lot of time and effort to the discussion of expanding Interstate 81, looking at the impact on traffic safety, and significantly, the impact on the environment.
We’ve pushed Waynesboro City Council to live up to its end of a deal struck a decade ago with the Wayne Theatre Alliance, and given city leaders hell for abandoning its downtown development initiative.
We lean, actually, tilt, strongly, to the left politically, but we’ve been critical of Democratic leaders in Richmond and Washington for effectively ignoring Western Virginia.
And now we effort daily to hold the Trump administration’s feet to the fire on issues across the spectrum: healthcare, immigration, the environment, race relations, the rollback on LGBTQ equality.
Our content doesn’t originate on a troll farm in some faraway land, paid for by interests aiming to influence public policy to the benefit of a foreign power or nameless, faceless corporatist cabal.
Our only agenda, to borrow from our founding tagline, is the truth.
Thinking of that H.L. Mencken quote here: that we’re here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
It’s our job to inform, to educate, and bottom line, make you confront sometimes hard truths.
If that makes us an #enemyofthepeople, well, so be it.
Column by Chris Graham
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