Daily Telegram opens new office in Adrian, news editor discusses other changes
Editor's note: The Telegram's office will be open from 9 a.m. to noon Friday, June 24. It will not be open in the afternoon because of maintenance being done to the parking lot.
In the classic 1984 spoof film “Top Secret!,” we’re reminded that “things change, people change, hairstyles change, interest rates fluctuate.”
Boy, do interest rates fluctuate.
For The Daily Telegram, change has been a part of our lives for much of the past several years, particularly the past two. The most recent change is the opening of our new office in downtown Adrian. We are renting space at CommonPoint, a co-working office at 247 S. Main St. It’s at the corner of South Main and South Winter streets, across the street from the Adrian fire station.
Starting Friday, June 24, we’ll have a customer service representative there from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays and Fridays. She’ll be able to help will billing and subscription questions. Please don't bring cash or checks to pay a bill. We no longer handle cash or checks. It’s not a COVID thing; it’s a way of doing business thing.
Some of you may not believe this, but it is better to manage your subscription by either calling our customer service center at 888-775-2853 or going online to help.lenconnect.com. Don’t call the 265-5111 number for customer service. You’ll probably end up talking to me, and all I can do is take your information and pass it along.
The Telegram’s news and sports reporters will be working there off and on, too. Our web-based content management system allows us to work from anywhere that has an internet connection. That was helpful when the pandemic started and we were told to work from home because we couldn’t ensure we could stay at least 6 feet apart. But now that COVID-19 cases are down and Gannett, the company that owns the Telegram, wants us to get used to working in an office at least part of the time, it’s nice to have a place where we can meet and collaborate again.
We are in a new office because Gannett sold our long-time home on North Winter Street last summer to a group of local investors who are working on a plan to redevelop that area.
This new office is simply the latest in a series of changes in recent years. I thought, while I have you, that I would address some of the other changes that have shaped the current Daily Telegram.
Mergers
The Telegram became part of Gannett in January 2020 when its owner, GateHouse Media, bought Gannett and adopted the Gannett name. That allowed us to share resources with larger papers like the Detroit Free Press, Lansing State Journal and USA TODAY, but it also affected our print deadlines. Our printing was moved from Adrian to the Detroit newspapers’ printing plant in Sterling Heights. The benefit was that we are now printed on a modern press. The downside is that our deadlines for filing stories were moved from late at night to 3 p.m. with a little bit of leeway for late-breaking stories. That early deadline allows time to print the Telegram and have the papers delivered to Adrian in time for our carriers to pick them up early in the morning.
So if you’re wondering why stories appear in print at least two days after something happens, that’s why.
The merger also allowed us to update our website, lenconnect.com, which is where breaking news appears first. I know a lot of you don’t do the internet, either because it’s not something you’re interested in or you live in a place where decent internet access is non-existent. For better or for worse, this is the direction the newspaper industry is headed.
There are also some out there who think we merged with The Monroe News or are printed in Monroe. Neither are true. We share a regional editor, Ray Kisonas, who has been with The Monroe News for a long time, and for a time we had a regional publisher who was based in Monroe. Now, we don’t even have a publisher. Aside from sharing stories now and then, we are separate newsrooms. Ray drives over to Adrian from Monroe for staff meetings. I’ve been to Monroe about four or five times in my almost 50 years on this planet. I’ve been to California more times than I’ve been to Monroe.
A little bit of trivia: Before the Gannett merger, the Monroe paper and the other southern Michigan GateHouse papers were printed in Adrian.
Content
Recently, you probably noticed that we’ve cut back on the number of opinion pages we’re running. That is a company-wide change to publish fewer opinion pieces. A big part of that is because opinion content tends to create a lot of confusion and even anger at the news media.
In the days before Facebook — before 2009 or so — people either read the opinion page in the paper or the opinion section on a newspaper’s website and knew what they were reading. Now, the vast majority of online readers come to newspaper stories — and not just the Telegram, but any publication — from links they see on Facebook or other social media sites. In that context, it can be difficult to tell if a piece is opinion or a regular, objective news story. On the Telegram’s website, opinion columns have a note highlighted in yellow that says it’s an opinion piece, but I don’t know how much that helps people understand what they’re reading.
We’ve been directed to run opinion pages with local content on Thursdays and Sundays. Fortunately, we’ve cultivated several columnists who either live in the area or used to live or work here. Some of them are retired Adrian College, Siena Heights University or Eastern Michigan University professors who are happy to share their expertise and insights into current events.
I’m sure you’ve noticed we have fewer local news and sports stories. That's because we have fewer reporters than we used to have. Back in 2008, we had six news reporters and two full-time sports writers plus the news and sports editors. We also had a special projects editor who handled special sections and did a lot of reporting about local schools. Now, we have two news reporters, Brad Heineman and Mary Lowe; one full-time sports reporter, Sean Reider; one part-time sports reporter, Doug Donnelly; our sports editor, Kris Lodes; and me.
Having a smaller staff means making difficult choices. In news, it has meant cutting back on some things that I hear about pretty regularly, like property transfers and marriage licenses. I took over doing those when reporter Dennis Pelham retired about six years ago and I was able to keep up with them fairly well until last spring when we lost a reporter position. I felt — and still feel — that we’re better served by me using time I spent typing up those items to write news stories instead.
We also don’t have as much crime coverage as we used to. Some of that is also due to having fewer reporters, but most of it is because of changes local law enforcement agencies and the courts have made.
The pandemic and new instructions from the State Court Administrative Office in Lansing changed our access to court files. They’re still public, but the situation now is that we essentially have to ask for specific files. The district court no longer sets aside the files of recent sentencings for us to go through because of how the office was restructured during the pandemic, so even if I had someone who could spend two or three mornings a week at the courts to go through the files, there isn’t a place for them to do that.
A less recent change is related to the police “blotter” where we listed crashes and minor offenses. We haven’t been able to do that since the two largest police agencies in the county, the sheriff’s office and Adrian police, went to a paperless reporting system. Patrol officers and deputies used to generate paper copies of their reports that their supervisors reviewed. Those reviewed copies were then provided to us each morning. When they went paperless and the supervisors were able to review the reports on their computers, those paper copies went away.
Again, those are still public records, but we have to ask for specific files now or try to get hold of someone who can talk to us about the incident.
We’ll report about fatal crashes and high-profile incidents, but there are going to be a lot of run-of-the-mill things that we simply don’t have the staff to cover.
If you are really curious about the kinds of things local police are dealing with and are able to go online, check out crimemapping.com. Incidents that the sheriff’s office and the police in Adrian, Madison Township and Tecumseh handle are posted there. Details are not provided, but you can see the location, the kind of incident, the date and time of the report, and the incident number, which can be used to ask for a copy of the report. It can even send an email each day with new incidents.
Having fewer reporters also means we have fewer people out and about and noticing things that are going on. We've always welcomed story ideas, but receiving tips from readers is more important than ever. Our staff tends to focus on the Adrian and Tecumseh areas because that's where most of our readers are, but we want to stay in touch with the other communities, too. You can email me at dpanian@lenconnect.com or call me at 517-417-2023. If you call, you might get my voicemail but please leave a message.
We're glad that we have a new place where we can meet our readers in person again, and we hope that you'll stick with us as we bring you the stories of life in Lenawee County.
David Panian is The Daily Telegram's news editor. Contact him at dpanian@lenconnect.com.
At a glance
WHAT: The Daily Telegram's new office
WHERE: 247 S. Main St., Adrian, inside the CommonPoint co-working offices
HOURS: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays and Fridays for customer service; other times by appointment
PHONE: For customer service, call 888-775-2853. For the newsroom, call 517-265-5111.
ONLINE: www.lenconnect.com
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Daily Telegram opens new office in Adrian
