First appeared in The Tecumseh Herald, January 6, 2024
As I reflect on the past year–it went pretty quickly, didn’t it?–I think about the stories I’ve written for The Tecumseh Herald and the many people I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing. Most of you know I love my work at the Herald and I’ll always be grateful to Jim Lincoln for inviting me aboard. Being a community journalist is my happy place.
In the olden days–those Dark Ages before Apple, Microsoft and the World Wide Web, even metro newspapers like the Detroit Free Press and the Ann Arbor News covered their communities–they were community newspapers first.
I was doing some research on my ancestors and came across the death certificate for my great-great-grandfather, Charles Louis Lapham. He was born May 13, 1836 in Greenfield, now part of the Downriver Detroit communities, and met his tragic end Oct. 17, 1902 at a railroad crossing near his home in Springwells. According to an account in the Detroit Free Press, published the next day, “At the Wabash Railroad crossing on Fort street yesterday afternoon, a team driven by Charles Lapham, an Ecorse farmer, aged 60 years, collided with a passenger train bound for Detroit. The engine struck the rear end of the wagon and tumbled the whole outfit, man, horses and wagon, into the ditch. The horses fell upon the driver, inflicting internal injuries, from which he died in Solvay hospital, Delray. The deceased, who lived on the Lapham road, leaves a widow and 10 children, all of whom are grown up. Justice Coulson of Delray will hold an inquest Thursday at 9 a.m.”
The death certificate tells the rest of the story and fills in some additional facts. Charles fathered 14 children, 10 of which survived him, and was 66 years old at the time of his death. In the place where a doctor would certify the manner and circumstances of death, someone, presumably Justice Coulson, had written, “The verdict of the jury in the case of Charles Lapham was that he came to his death on the 17th of October from injuries received by being run over by a Wabash RR train.”
In this same edition of the Freep, in fact, right next to the headline about my grandfather’s death, is a notice of “More Free Delivery for Lenawee County.” The article goes on to announce that “an additional rural free delivery route will be established on November 1 at Onsted, Lenawee County. It will be 24-3/4 miles long, cover an area of 26 square miles, and serve a population of 567.”
In the last 20 years, we’ve seen hundreds of newspapers shuttered, re-organized, subsumed by giant media companies, forced to reduce news staffs and the “news hole” and finally going exclusively digital. The old “community newspapers” of the past like the Freep once was no longer exist. But there are community newspapers that survive–even thrive–in their local markets and The Tecumseh Herald is no exception. The page count and the staff isn’t as robust as in the “pre-Internet” era, but like a handful of local weeklies in the county, everyone is committed to bringing local news to the area as best as they can.
Not only is the Herald still printed in Tecumseh, it’s also staffed by local people who are all devoted to providing the community with an excellent product each week.
I remember my first newspaper boss, Paul Tull, publisher of The Saline Reporter, talking about the challenges of weekly journalism. He had grown up in Detroit, a newsboy selling The Detroit Times, and had a passion for the small town local paper. He saw the potential of newspapers for community-building and knew that strong communities were successful ones with good schools and opportunities. Of course, he couldn’t have predicted the impact of the “Information Superhighway” on community journalism. But the foundation of this important piece of our community remains.
Like so many other small papers struggling in the world of social media and ever advancing technology, the Herald staff works hard to support the community and promote its residents, events, and businesses. But, it could use a helping hand.
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