125 Years of Community history • triumphs • truth
Readers of all shapes, hungry for news Thursday, October 17, 2019
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By PETER CROWLEY Managing Editor nly once have I woken up early enough to see the delivery driver swing by my house at 5:30 a.m. and, like a ghost, sneak the Enterprise into the brown and yellow tube below the mailbox. Since the Enterprise became a morning paper in April, many readers have told me how much they love getting the paper so early. I haven’t verified this by seeing their faces light up as they begin their morning read, but I have seen the glint in two young men’s eyes as they snatched the Enterprise shortly after midnight, when it was delivered to a crowded Saranac Lake bar where they were enjoying beers. I couldn’t hear their conversation over the loud music, and from the way they held the paper I couldn’t see which articles they huddled over, but they were drinking it in. Who says only old people read the print edition? Don’t believe the hype about young people not caring about local news. They do, and around here they get it from the Enterprise, whether online or in print. Anyone who follows Instagram feeds such as @saranaclakememes, @memethetrilakes and @lakeplacidmemes knows that the local news spoofed there is heavily dependent on Enterprise reporting, often including screenshots of actual Enterprise headlines. Whoever those anonymous satirists are, they appear to be pretty young, and their followers tend to be young, too, including many local teenagers. They’re probably too young to have read “Leaven of Malice,” Robertson Davies’ comic 1954 novel about a community newspaper whose editor compares it to a barber’s chair that adjusts to fit all buttocks. It’s a silly analogy, but it rings true in its basic point that a well-rounded newspaper is meant for everyone, not just people of one shape. It’s not a niche product. Some people read only the comics, or just the sports, politics, want ads or horoscopes. It’s a buffet for you to take what you like. Plus, in a small town like this, you can tell someone on the newspaper’s staff how you want it to be, and they’ll hear you out and possibly adjust it for you, as with the proverbial barber chair. I thought back to people with whom I’d discussed the paper over the years. I picked a few of them and interviewed them to see what they think of it. Here’s what they said. Sixth-generation local If we think the Enterprise is hot stuff because it’s been around 125 years, that’s nothing compared to Tim Moody’s family. His great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Smith Moody settled in what’s now Saranac Lake’s Moody Pond and Pine Street area in 1818, receiving the land in lieu of pay for his service as a fife player in the War of 1812. Tim called the Enterprise “the absolute backbone of the TriLakes area.” He noted that there have been times he didn’t agree with an editorial or a news story’s approach, but he said the paper carries plenty of local news as well as news of the region, state, nation and world. He especially likes the pages with numerous short articles to give him a wider selection of happenings in small bites. “I think it behooves everyone in the world to keep track of their surroundings,” he said. “Our paper has got the pulse of the central Adirondacks.” But he said people have to look beyond their
Two young men huddle over a fresh copy of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise just after it’s delivered to Bitters & Bones bar in Saranac Lake around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, June 1.
(Enterprise photo — Peter Crowley)
hometown as well, and the Enterprise is a good way to do that. “You gotta care about what’s going on downriver,” he said. He added that he has advertised his plumbing business in the Enterprise, and it worked. “Advertising is expensive, but I have had nothing but fantastic results from advertising in the Enterprise.” Newcomer Mei-Ling McNamara has lived here less than a year, moving from Colorado to McColloms in December 2018 with her three children and her husband, who was hired by Paul Smith’s College. “We wanted to be closer to wild nature and the mountains,” she said. She’s 44 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. She’s an investigative multimedia journalist with such prestigious titles as the Guardian, focusing mostly on human trafficking. She’s also been a journalism professor. With such a high standard, I was a little surprised when she told me how much she liked the Enterprise. She said reading it helps her get to know the community here. “I like the angle on local news,” she said. “I like its profiles of local people. ... I like the fact that it does some historical pieces in the area, looks back at local characters ... while also having news, important local news.” It’s also useful in telling her “what I need to know about things happening,” she said. She’d like to see more in-depth news series, but that aside, she said, “The paper is very much part of how the community operates. ... Some local papers lose relevancy, but it tries to be on top of what’s going on in the community.” Critic Jim McCulley also believes the Enterprise should do more indepth local reporting, and he is not
timid about calling us out on that. “I don’t take it personally or with any animosity,” he said. “You just say what you need to say and move on.” He’s a fiscal conservative who thinks taxes are far too high and government spending far too lavish. A 54-year-old who has lived in Lake Placid since he was 7, he said he loves living here but added that he’ll have to move away after he retires, because of the property taxes. For example, it frustrates him that Lake Placid’s school district hasn’t downsized as its student enrollment has declined. “I look at all the spending that’s going in this area, and I’m very concerned,” he said. “I think the Enterprise should start focusing on more of those things.” McCulley said he doesn’t subscribe to the Enterprise but still reads it every day, and learns things from it all the time. He said he understands that because there’s so much news to cover here, the Enterprise would need a bigger staff to do the kind of in-depth reporting he wants to see. “This area is almost bizarre in some ways: It’s a tiny area with so much happening,” he said. “And the Enterprise stays on top of it. “I think the Enterprise is a valuable asset to the community. I don’t think there’s any question about it,” he added. “Most areas this size don’t have anything.” Fan Beth VanAnden, 71, grew up in Rochester and has lived since 2013 in Saranac Lake, where she retired recently as a physician’s assistant. She has told me several times how much she loves the Enterprise. When I asked her why, she gave a list of reasons. “This is an edited, professional paper,” she said. “This is not fake news. There are corrections if errors are made. The story selection is comprehensive. “Second, it’s local. I read sto-
ries about music, about sports, about arts, about businesses. I see the Tri-Lakes calendar; I use it every week. It’s great for people who can’t remember when things are, like me. She loves Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau, an “age-mate” who grew up in Saranac Lake. She loves the Enterprise columnists, especially Bob Seidenstein and Howard Riley whom she described as “part of that elite group of people who write interesting stuff even if you’re not from there.” She loves that different points of view appear on the Opinion page and that they’re generally respectful. “This isn’t about shaming,” she said. “It’s about sharing ideas and information ... not just making somebody look bad. “This is a professional paper,” she repeated. “The layouts are good. The content is good. It is not sloppy at all. And we get awards because it is not sloppy. ... I say we get awards, but you get awards. Our paper. I think this paper represents something about our community that is exemplary.” Former staffer Rip Allen first encountered the Enterprise in Guinea, West Africa. He and his first wife were there, working for the then-new Peace Corps, when they met the U.S. ambassador to that country. His name was Jim Loeb, and he happened to be one of the Enterprise’s two owners. Loeb took a liking to the young couple and offered Allen a job at his paper. “He said, ‘Why don’t you go up to Saranac Lake and give Howard Riley a hand?’” Allen said. Up to that point, most of Allen’s writing was poetry. His only journalism experience was a summer course he took at Columbia after graduating from Cornell. Nevertheless, the couple moved here in 1964, and except for a brief stint in Pennsylvania, he’s
lived here ever since. He worked for six years as a reporter and associate editor on the Enterprise’s small news crew. He was the main historical researcher and writer behind the Enterprise’s 75th anniversary special section in November 1969. He had a column for a while, and if someone had a problem with something he wrote, they’d let him know. “I was a little bit liberal for the taste of Saranac Lake, and I probably stepped on some toes that way. But in general, everybody — it was pretty laid back.” The Enterprise had a long history as a Republican paper, but Loeb and his co-owner Roger Tubby were Democrats, and so was Allen. While on the news staff, he actively supported antiwar presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 campaign. Nevertheless, he said, “I can’t remember a single incidence of someone coming in and complaining about the political swing of the Enterprise at the time.” Tubby and Loeb “worked very hard for the community ... and I think that was appreciated. ... It was not a split community in those days in any sense.” Is that still the case? “I don’t know,” he said. “If it is, I think you guys are pretty quiet about it. I know with things in general around the country, there are certain topics you just don’t bring up because you don’t want to get in an argument.” Since 1992, Allen’s main work has been for the American Red Cross disaster relief and with senior citizens. Now 80, he’s still an Enterprise subscriber. He often turns first to the Opinion page and the obituaries. “I personally also always head for the back page or whatever” for national and world news, “because I don’t watch that much television. ... I’d much rather read a story on a page, and without all the advertisements every five minutes.”