Some still carry sputtering torch of journalism

Stefanik makes a show of her ignorance

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Curious about the new Post-Star editor, Lisa Reider, I called her and she agreed to meet Tuesday at Spot Coffee for an interview.

Reider came here in March, after a man named Paul Kasko, a marketing executive, lasted less than a month in the job. Go to Mr. Kasko’s LinkedIn page and you find no mention of his brief sojourn in the North Country. Just an uninterrupted 10 years and eight months as “managing director, content marketing” for his current employer, “Narrative Content Group” in the greater Atlanta area.

Lucky him that he was able to go back to his old job. Maybe his stint in Glens Falls was actually a vacation.

But I can’t blame Kasko for that fiasco. The fault lies with Lee Corp., owner of the Post-Star, whose boneheaded policies and promotions hastened the decline over the past 15 years of one of the country’s great small newspapers.

I could go on, bitterly.

Lisa Reider has been editor of the Post-Star since March. She only has a couple of reporters to work with, but she still believes in the ability of a local paper to hold people in power accountable and bring a local community together around common interests.

Instead, I’ll talk about Reider, a better hire who jumped into journalism in 2016 knowing how badly off newspapers were but wanting something more than she was getting at Buyers Laboratory in Hackensack, New Jersey. She wrote reports there, on tech products like scanners.

But she had studied journalism at Ithaca College before getting the Hackensack job and “really it was news that was my passion,” she said.

She knew 2016 wasn’t an auspicious time to take up newspaper work. Papers across the country were bleeding reporters, editors, photographers, cartoonists and columnists. Hundreds of papers ended up shutting down, while others, like the Post-Star, became smaller, meeker and less well-written.

But Reider doesn’t constantly compare newspapers’ current condition with their not long-gone glory days, the way I do.

“I’ve only known a struggling industry,” she said.

Yet she finds inspiration in the work.

“It’s an important piece of our democracy. I believe in the fourth estate. We have to keep tabs on people in power,” she said.

The more personal stories the paper does “foster empathy,” she said, and help bring people in the community together in appreciation of their common humanity.

Newspapers served their communities so well for so long we took for granted the positive effects they had on local governments and local citizens.

Now most of us spend our news-gathering time in an online media environment defined by hucksterism and lies. That, too, has had a powerful effect on our culture and politics.

Reider is down to two and a half reporters from the 20-ish we used to have in the Post-Star newsroom. She had three and a half “for a hot second” when she was first hired, she said, but one of them, Nayanika Guha, wasn’t able to renew her visa in March (I wonder why) and the position has not been filled.

“You’ve gotta make do or do it yourself,” Reider said.

The volume of work at small newspapers has always been overwhelming, especially for editors. The Post-Star used to have a large enough circulation it could afford a larger staff and more specialization, but no longer.

Reider came from weekly papers, which often run local news exclusively, and she has brought that orientation with her. When Charlie Kirk’s assassination didn’t run on the front page, she heard from angry readers.

Huge stories like the Sept. 11 attacks would go out front, she said, but, otherwise, she intends to stick to an all-local format, even if that means putting on Page 1 rewritten press releases that, in the past, would have been buried inside.

The newsroom still has editorial independence from corporate stumblebums, she said. (She said “corporate,” I added “stumblebums.”)

She has written editorials in past jobs and intends to do so here after she gets acclimated.

“I would like to get more of a sense of the issues first,” she said.

Seven months is long enough to get a sense of things, I’d say, and I have an editorial she could do right now: “Why Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve the front page.” That should make a splash.

Poem

Here is a poem by Hudson Falls poet Richard Carella:

Crux of Everything

Having everything...                                                                                                                  isn’t everything–

what we

do with                                                                                                                               everything we

have is 

something,                                                                                                                                   too:

maybe everything.

Speaking of poetry

I noticed that Saratoga Springs has named as its second-ever poet laureate of the city Jay Rogoff, a retired Skidmore professor, excellent poet and nice guy. I wrote a profile of him 30 years ago, after the publication of his first book, “The Cutoff.”

I gave him a call to pitch my suggestion that Glens Falls should have a poet laureate, and he not only embraced the idea but suggested someone.

“You have a terrific poet right in town, David Graham. He’s been here for 7 or 8 years. He came back after retirement from Ripon College (in Wisconsin). He’s really quite a wonderful poet,” he said.

I went to Graham’s website and confirmed for myself his “wonderful” status. He’s got a good sense of humor, too, as evidenced by this poem of his that he features on his home page, along with a photo of half a banana:

Love

This is just                                                                                                                                    to say                                                                                                                                             she left half                                                                                                                                    of the last                                                                                                                                 banana                                                                                                                                            on the kitchen                                                                                                                       counter                                                                                                                                           this morning

for me to find.

If you’re not sure why that’s funny, click this link to check out a famous poem by William Carlos Williams that was first published about 90 years ago.

Ignorance is … ignorant

Dan Clark, who writes Capitol Confidential on Substack, wrote an excellent column this past week that explains how ignorant Elise Stefanik can be. Check it out by clicking on the bold words above.

In brief, Stefanik repeated a false charge that New York had issued a commercial driver’s license to someone without legal status to be in the country and who refused to provide his full name. Both of these assertions are incorrect, and the reason they were made exposes the ignorance and the bigotry that is at the bottom of much of what is done and claimed by the Trump regime and its loyal lieutenants such as Stefanik.

Lots of art

My daughter Tam and I went to the opening Saturday evening of the new exhibit at the Lake George Arts Project, Artists Invite Artists: It’s in our Nature, which is up until Oct. 25. It’s a great show, with spectacular pieces from an array of local artists. The Courthouse Gallery at 1 Lower Amherst St. is open Wednesday through Friday 12-5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 12-4 p.m.

Serena Kovalosky talks Saturday evening at the Lake George Arts Project about her work, “When a Tree Falls in the Woods,” which is made from a gourd.

This piece, Circus 3 by Fawn Krieger and Jorg Jacoby, includes real succulents in ceramic containers.

In the following video, artist Joy Muller-McCoola speaks about her work, “The Fire Died,” installed in the fireplace at Lake George Arts Project’s Courthouse Gallery.