News : 2010 Year in Review: An Introduction

Much has changed, for me and my job, this year.

But one thing is still the same.

Every year, after Christmas, I would do the same thing: I would read through the newspapers wherever I worked – according to my count, that would be six different publications in four different eastern Iowa towns – and review the stories of the past year.

Newspaper people would say that we do this because it offers a valuable service: It reminds our readers (and ourselves) of what happened in the previous year.

That is true.

But we also did this every year for another reason: There is absolutely no other news happening at this time of the year. And instead of offering some deep, well-researched investigative journalism, we dig out old papers in an effort to say to our readers (and our bosses), “Hey, I really did work hard this year.”

That is exactly what I am doing – and why I am doing it – today.

Since there is nothing going on in real news this week, I am going to begin reviewing the big news of 2010, as you saw it in Vinton Today.

Some people like to do a “Top 10” story, listing what they think – or what readers may think – are the most important stories of 2010. That’s OK, but why do we have to stop at 10? Why not 11? 23? Or maybe, 6?

We are not doing a Top Anything Story. We will just read through our web site, reviewing the most significant stories that we published in 2010.

We began in mid-March. I thought our official start date was March 15, but I see our first story – about a horrific event – was dated March 11.

I can tell you that there were two big stories in progress before Vinton Today came along.

One of them was the final stages of the planning of the new Benton County Jail. One of our first stories here at Vinton Today was about the 17.5-pound set of plans that the architects carried to Vinton many times as local leaders finalized the plans for the replacement of the LEC destroyed in the Flood of 2008.

The other big story went on behind the scenes, in January and February. We we found out what that story was, we decided it was time to quit focusing on newspapers and start focusing on the news.

That’s how this project was born.

To a young reader who asks, “Where did Vinton Today come from?” I would reply, “Well, when a regional media company and a stubborn editor dislike each other very much……”

But seriously, Vinton Today was never about what I disliked, but about doing what I love best: Writing and taking photographs. When explaining what I do to people not familiar with Vinton Today, or online-only newspapers, I always say, “I am doing what I always did, only via the Internet.”

The main problem we faced, at first, was that many people did not know about us. Now, I think everyone in Vinton knows about Vinton Today. We still face a problem in that many of the people who loved my articles when I was writing for newspapers do not have computers. I cannot count the number of people who said to me, “I miss reading your articles,” but when I told them about Vinton Today, they simply replied, “But I don’t have a computer.”

I tried to tell them to get a child – or grandchild – to teach them. But I think some people have a computer phobia. I have also seen some people get over that phobia, and learn to find www.vintontoday.com.

So, over the next few day, with no other significant news about which to write – you can see that while spending more time writing and less with the other non-writing distractions of the newspaper industry, I have learned to stop ending phrases with prepositions – I will share some of the significant stories that we brought to our readers in 2010.

I hope you enjoy this short trip down memory lane. And I hope I spend the next 18 or more years doing at the end of each December what I am doing today – sharing the news of the previous year with the people who find Vinton Today an important way to keep in touch and up-to-date with Vinton.

To those of you who do not want to wait for me to review the news of the year, I can tell you how to do it yourself. Go to www.vintoniowa.org/articles/news98. There you will see the first page of news stories we published in March of 2010. Type in any other number between 1 and 97 to see the more recent stories. (Page 1 is the most recent page of news stories; 98 the earliest.)

I will be doing that over the next few days, and sharing here some of our photos and stories of 2010.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.