Sometimes I think growing up in a society that values rugged individualism so strongly as a virtue can have some negative effects. Now, I’m not knocking individualism. If anybody has ever marched to the beat of their own drum, it’s me. But this focus on individualism, on being able to do it all on your own, all by yourself, can be toxic. It can lead people to feeling like they’re failures if they can’t do every single thing on their own.
And the truth is, sometimes you need a team. Maybe I’m saying something that is apparent to folks who grew up playing sports (and it’s something you’d have thought I’d picked up playing in band), but I have often felt like I was a coattail rider if I was working with someone else on a project and we were playing to their strengths instead of mine. In school. In business. It didn’t matter. I needed to be able to do it all.
Sometimes that worked out for me. I got my first newspaper job because I could also develop photos. But I wasn’t the best photographer on staff, even if I could do it. I knew that, and I was glad to work with better photographers when I could, and learn from them.
In various paper jobs I had to take on different duties as staffing ebbed and flowed. But I was completely unprepared for all the things we were going to have to do when we started this paper. Still, that sense of “I can do it all” kicked in, and we made it work.
In those early days it was just me and my wife. I was doing the reporting. I was doing the photography. I was covering arrests. I was covering city and county government. I was running the editorial page, and writing all the editorials myself. I was also handling distribution and trying to sell ads with limited success. Meanwhile my wife was completely handling – and continues to handle – the layout, billing, subscriptions, the labeling for mailings, and every aspect of the business end. It was exhausting. More than any two people should do. But we did it.
As I have begun to delegate these things to other contributors, though, I have sometimes felt like an imposter. But the truth is, I’m being the editor. I’m leading a team.
And I have a wonderful and talented team. They don’t always do things the way that I would do them, but that’s okay. They do their jobs well and that’s why they’re here.
Charles does not share my writing style, but he does a fantastic job covering city council, fiscal court and other local government. He has been able to dive deeper than I ever could have into local government by going to meetings that I often missed and extending his coverage to utilities and other important infrastructure issues that weren’t getting enough attention whenever I was trying to do everything on my own. We couldn’t do this paper without Charles at this point, and I’m lucky to have him on board.
Brayleigh Boggs I fully expect to win us some photography awards, if not this year then next. We had limited content to work with for this year, because of her start date. But 2027 better watch out because I’m already cataloging the photos that she’s sending me, and we’ve got some fantastic shots. Her sports writing is better than anything I’ve ever done too, and displays an understanding of the game that I’ll never achieve.
Speaking of sports, our former sports writer Miranda Lewis has done a wonderful job maintaining our website and earned the silver cup that’s been sitting on my shelf waiting to get into her hands for nearly a year now.
While we couldn’t really do the paper the same way at this point without all of these folks, we couldn’t do the paper at all – and we never would’ve done the paper at all – without my wonderful and amazing wife, Nicole. This amazing firebrand of a woman, this absolute force of nature, took a throwaway comment and a pipe dream and made them a reality.
This newspaper has always been a team effort. It was a team effort from the beginning. That team’s just grown from me and her to all the rest of these folks and to you, the community that supports us. We couldn’t do any of this if you weren’t picking us up. We do our best to cover all of our local government. We do our best to cover courts and crime. We do our best to provide a platform for every voice in this community who cares to share their concerns, their views, and their opinions with us. This isn’t my newspaper, it never was. It’s ours. And I thank you for the privilege of allowing us to start it, and to keep it going.
