Column: Community Press & Recorder papers gave voices to the spirit of your 1 square foot

I pride myself on being the sort of editor who never drove her co-workers to drink. But I'm just as proud of the fact I once drove former Community Press sports editor Mark Motz home after I made him drink. A lot.

As part of a Lead Clermont project, the Community Press Clermont County staff organized a public event with the Ohio State Highway Patrol in Batavia where we gave two of our staff members, Mark and Lisa McPhail, alcoholic beverages at regular intervals and asked the troopers to test their blood-alcohol levels after each drink.

Tall, burly Mark and tiny Lisa had as opposite body types as you could get, so they perfectly illustrated how a few drinks actually impaired their ability to drive. Let's just say the eye-opening experience made it necessary for Lisa and Mark to get rides home.

Equal parts funny and sobering, this story came up recently as a group of past and present Community Press and Recorder staff members reminisced about our time there ahead of May 25, 2022, when the newspapers will distribute their final print editions.

"In its day Community Press was the history of suburban Cincinnati, and we wrote it, photographed it, printed it and delivered it," said Gary Presley, former managing editor of the Community Press East Office.

We earned our readers' trust with our presence and the voices we used to tell their stories. I used to say I would write stories and columns based on their one square foot, the imaginary box that had room for only them, their successes and sorrows.

My personal Press role models – Jennie Key and Heidi Fallon – could write a book on it.

It was my weekly routine in high school to read their columns and articles in the Hilltop and Northwest presses. Their conversational, often funny approach to reporting what was happening in my one square foot gave me focus. I wanted to do that one day.

And, I did.

After my introductory column as the new Western Hills Press writer was published in 1993, I'd parked at the Green Township administration building for my first trustees' meeting. Before I could hit the front door, multiple strangers who must have seen my column photo greeted me like I was family.

Two years later, those hellos would come with inquiries about my newborn son, Jake, now 26, who would later hand out goodies from his Community Press carrier bag in the Harvest Home Parade. My daughter, Meghan, 21, a recent Xavier University graduate, came around when I was in the 2000 Lead Clermont class, the best class, I might add. I'd tote them around with me to community events to carry my camera bag and no one thought that was strange.

The Cheviot-Westwood Kiwanis knew my kids by name from attending their meetings. It was such a joy to recently speak to their members at a lunch.

The kids didn't get to meet Alyssa Binkley, because I covered an annual Cheviot event she attended straight from the hospital while my mom was sick and didn't have my son with me (Meg wasn't born).

Alyssa was a little cancer patient/survivor who came to a fundraiser I covered every year organized by a Cheviot hair salon. That sweet girl had the cutest hats to cover her head, one reminding me of Paddington Bear's signature hat. I remember losing my words when her mom said she called me "her Melanie." Besides hoping I just spelled her name properly (the article was published so long ago, I can't find it to check), I wish I had kept in touch.

Not everyone knew me by looking at me. One weekday, I was standing behind a group of people in line for lunch in Monfort Heights and I heard my name spoken. My head jerked up and I strained to eavesdrop. In essence, they were quoting content from one of my stories as proof of something to be true. It hit me in a very humbling way that I was someone else's Jennie Key and Heidi Fallon.

When I received a promotion to news editor in 1996, I didn't write those columns as often as I had, much to my mother's dismay, but people still would approach me to say they read my columns every week. I never corrected them because that wasn't the point, was it? They connected with me, which was my blessing, honor and privilege.

Over the years, people would ask why my ambitions hadn't gone past a weekly newspaper group. I chalked it up to people who just didn't get me. It's a value system not easily explained but, rather, easily felt.

I'd like to think my current work at the Cincinnati Enquirer is a hybrid of that value system and digital daily journalistic practices. My work now with high school sports is about remembering all athletes have a story and people who love them.

Every day, our amazing team of good-to-the-core people makes someone's day when we keep that simple thought in mind. Nothing is too small to acknowledge when we're talking about their one square foot.

One of my favorite stories came from the mother of a former Eastern Hills Journal junior carrier. St. Xavier football had just won a state championship, a deal sealed when a defensive player got a key interception. It wasn't unusual for us to find where each player photographed lived and make sure a photo of him reached his community paper.

We made sure to place that defensive player on the front of the next Eastern Hills Journal. His very emotional mother called me to share heartfelt gratitude. See, her son shyly mentioned to her that he wondered if we'd have the state championship story in the paper that week.

When the papers came, he was stunned to see his photo front and center. She said I can't know what that meant to him and to her as his mom. A few years earlier, a doctor had told him he'd never play football again after a terrible leg injury. Seeing his image in the paper he had delivered was validation of his hard work, one he carried with him as he played Division I football in college.

While that boy brought me joy, another broke my heart.

The very first time I reported on something major was in July 1993. I was an editorial assistant at the Community Press office in Eastgate and everyone else was gone for the July 4 holiday weekend.

A police scanner told us a Williamsburg boy had been a hero and saved his friends from a treehouse fire. Gary Presley, my boss then, put a camera in my hand and nudged me out the door. I drove to their house, expecting to see a teenager with soot on his smiling face, getting hugs and high fives from family and friends.

Instead, I saw his family crying on the front porch and his mother sitting at the end of a fire truck, inconsolable. All I could do was put my arm around her and cry too.

Her precious boy did get those friends out first. The mattress they walked over to get out the treehouse door caught fire and he couldn't get through. I told her I'd come back the following Monday so I could hear all about him after she had some time to process it. It was then I learned he loved Guns & Roses' "November Rain" and the treehouse he built with his friends.

Weekly newspaper deadlines allowed me to do that, without putting pressure on a grieving mother. That's the storyteller I am.

I admit to feeling a bit salty when people equate weeklies with weakly done journalism.

Make no mistake, circle of life announcements, festivals and trustees meetings were only one side of what we did. Being at those community events meant we saw and heard things from people who came to trust our presence. It translated into exclusive content. Allow me to brag on a few highlights:

• Former Suburban Life writer John Bach's exclusive reporting circa 1997 led to a state investigation of then-Columbia Township administrator Jim Harmon and his daughter, clerk Debra Huff. Harmon was eventually convicted of stealing almost a quarter-million dollars in public funds, one of the biggest theft-in-office cases in Hamilton County history.

• Reporting from the former Northeast office staff on traffic deaths got a light installed at cross county and Interstate 71.

• In 2004, Florence/Boone County Recorder reporter Liz Carey's public record searches of one-time Florence Freedom owner Chuck Hildebrant netted a long history of criminal convictions, forgery and embezzlement that explained the 30 liens worth more than $4.7 million put on the Florence Freedom stadium. In February 2006, she broke in the Campbell County Recorder the story on Cold Spring Baptist Church’s pastor Larry Davis and accusations that he embezzled nearly $1.5 million from the church. Carey also broke the Pure Social Club story in early 2000s.

• A five-year-long project with Theresa Herron as the lead writer, me as her editor and others won a national Suburban Newspapers of America award for Community Service. The project detailed how Clermont County led the state in driving-under-the-influence road fatalities. You may also recall Theresa's reporting on Matt Maupin, Rhonda Jean Brown, Garnet Cooper and Brenda Slaby. Her stories on the Mt. Washington liquor commission led to changes in the law that cracked down on liquor licenses and how they were reinstated.

• The Community Press's Sportsman of the Year was the springboard for what is now the highly successful Enquirer/Mercy Health Athlete of the Week online voting for high school sports.

• From 1997 to 1998, there was a horrible run of disasters in Clermont County: The Auxier Gas explosion, the New Richmond area flood, the Felicity area tornado and a plane crash at the Clermont County Airport. Unfortunately, our staff got very good at covering these disasters so someone made hats calling us the "Disaster Team," "D-Squad" or "D-Team."

The present and past Community Press and Recorder staff members have a Facebook group we use to stay connected. I asked them to provide simple word associations that might help bring back memories of features and people gone by.

Here's what they came up with, in part: Ruthie Day, Bonnie Beasley, Sandy Letcher, Readers on Vacation, Scavenger Hunt, Me and My Pet, Best of the West track meet, The Ole Fisherman George Rooks, Tom Gaither, Rita Heikenfeld, Father Lou Guntzelman, Iris Pastor, Ten Who Cared, Ch@troom, Creative Living, Prime Edition, Craig Kopp movie reviews, Hometown Heroes, sharing staff recipes at Christmas, At Home with Beverly Nye, Sideline Stories, Joe Minster, Rick Crawford, East Side Weekend, Prime Edition, RedsVue, classified ads, junior newspaper carriers, Santa letters, Sharon Brumagem's student correspondent program, Pigskin Picks, Thom VanBenschoten's artwork, Scout tours of our offices (and the chance for them to see their birth announcements in our bound volumes), Bruno the bird you'd see in classified ad promotions and in events such as the Harvest Home parade.

More: Take 5: A 'well' of talent from the best Cincinnati scene artist you've never heard of

"What we had at the Community Press was lightning in a bottle," said Kelli Milligan Stammen, former Tri-County Press writer and author of "For what it's worth." "Advertising, editorial, graphics, press...it was a family. Being gone 20 years now brings nostalgia, but also a vast appreciation of what we had as a team. That earnest work and effort shined through in the pages of these local papers we poured our blood, sweat, tears and laughter into."

In journalism lingo, -30- signifies the end of a story. The end of the newspaper group that started my professional career will happen in my 30th year with the company, ironically.

While the tangible evidence of community weekly journalism in Cincinnati will no longer be there, it's important that our readers know some of us are still here infusing our servant souls into The Enquirer: Adam Baum, Keith Biery-Golick, Andrea Reeves Cruikshank, Jason Hoffman, Jeanne Houck, Jordan Kellogg, Jennie Key, Beryl Love, Scott Springer, James Weber, Stephen Wilder and yours truly.

People and publications may leave us but the spirit and heart of your one square foot will always be our priority.

-30-

P.S. After submitting this column for print, I had the honor of attending the Oak Hills High School graduation May 21. Before the ceremony, they put then-and-now photos on the big screen of each graduate. I'm not sure who this young man is, but I want to thank him and his family for including a "then" photo of him reading the Delhi Press. Fran Vashon is somewhere smiling.

Melanie Laughman is a sports digital content coach for The Enquirer. She wanted this final column to serve as a sign-off for these treasured newspapers.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Community Press & Recorder papers to distribute final products