North Country journalism takes a hit
Vaccine rates could be better locally
The Front Page
Morning Update
Sunday, June 27, 2021
By Ken Tingley
Whenever Perry White introduced himself as the editor of the Watertown Times, people of a certain generation did a double take. They had to be sure he wasn’t pulling their leg.
You half expected them to say, “You mean editor of The Daily Planet,” the fictitious newspaper from the Superman comic book series that employed Clark Kent and Lois Lane.
Perry lived up to his namesake and became a managing editor at a pretty good community newspaper in upstate New York. My recollection was that Perry and I met at a newspaper conference in Syracuse shortly after he became editor in 2015, but it could have been somewhere else. With a long, flowing white beard and that unforgettable name, he was a person you did not forget.
What I do know was that at one of those meetings, we talked about sharing our coverage of our new congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Her sprawling North County district encompassed Watertown, Glens Falls, Plattsburgh and Saranac Lake. We believed we could better serve our readers with we shared our work.
Perry and I were all in and eventually we got Peter Crowley, editor of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, to join us. When we tried to bring Plattsburgh on board, their editor, Lois Claremont, was a little more skeptical about sharing content. We kept working on her and eventually got her on board.
At first we shared debate stories with one newspaper covering the event for the others to save money on travel. Gradually, we shared all our campaign stories and then finally all our stories. We ran each other’s editorials and columns. When Rep. Stefanik refused to talk to one of us, the other newspaper would ask her questions and share her answers.
We did not believe we were in competition with each other and that sharing was good for our readers.
The collaboration has worked quite well and continues to this day.
Perry retired in 2018 and moved to New Mexico. He passed away in June 2020.
A month later, I retired from The Post-Star.
And this week, Peter announced he was leaving the Daily Enterprise. After 17 years, his plan is become a high school English teacher. No successor has been named yet.
I think we were all proud of the newspapers we produced and the way we handled the challenges in recent years. We were proud of the coalition we formed. I don’t know of any others like it.
Losing someone like Peter Crowley will leave a big hole in the North Country. You don’t replace veterans journalists like him. I saw he was honored last week by the folks in Saranac Lake. That was good to see and probably long overdue.
Moore leaves Post-Star
I had not seen any stories by Kathleen Moore in The Post-Star for a few weeks. I figured she was on vacation. But when I sent her an email this week, her email said she had left The Post-Star and could be contacted at the Albany Times-Union.
It is a good move for Kathleen. She is going to be covering southern Saratoga County - closer to home in Schenectady - at a larger newspaper for a bit more money.
I’m personally sad to see her go. She covered some big stories for us at The Post-Star, including the email scandal during the 2017 Queensbury election and the turmoil around Glens Falls Hospital’s finances in 2019. She swept the community service awards in the state contests for that coverage.
Kathleen is one of those “just the facts, ma’am” type of reporters who is tough, but fair. She never was intimidated and she always tried to get the story right. The Times-Union got a good one.
Vaccine update
I was feeling good with New York’s vaccination rate up over 70 percent this past week until I checked the numbers for the local counties. While 62 percent of Warren County is vaccinated, only 50 percent of Washington County has gotten the shots. Saratoga County is at 63 percent, Essex at 59 and Clinton at 58.
Surely, we can do better than that.
Speaking of editors retiring, why is The Post Star without an editor?