There Are No Little Stories

by Maura Casey

News is the lifeblood of a community, and so consider me a cheerleader for the PACERS Rural Community Newspaper Network and its effort to expand the understanding of everyday happenings in Alabama. These newspapers, and the work done to launch their publication, is absolutely crucial. To tell you why, let me relate a story of my own.

announced the news of Anna’s birth yet?” My husband smiled, and without missing a beat, he said, “No, but you journalists always miss the big stories.”

Pete was teasing me, because I was then the editorial page editor of the local newspaper in Lawrence, Mass. But his observation was far more profound than he intended. Pete was right: The big stories are always contained in the small stories. They are often overlooked because they are ordinary, and yet, they make up the beating heart of a community. Indeed, they embody life itself.

Perhaps especially the latter. My Anna has her own baby now, and when I first saw her, I blurted out, “Oh, Ellie, how did I ever breathe without you? Welcome, welcome!”

It’s all news, darn it, and none of it is trivial. It’s big stuff. Bigger than we know. It helps make us neighbors. It binds us together. It helps us realize all that we have in common, and enables us to see that differences are never so great as what unites us.

Newspapers have shuttered permanently and the ones still in print have tiny and overworked staffs. They barely have time to cover a fire or a fatal highway accident during a normal day. Anything less than a catastrophe is often ignored.

Inevitably, the publications become top-heavy with wire market will open for the season.

And that’s why I am thrilled to see this mission to expand critical news in uncovered corners of Alabama. Like a benevolent and helpful contagion (unlike the virus we have all been dealing with since last year), I hope the effort spreads.

One Sunday morning, longer ago than I would like to admit, I was resting in the hospital a day after the birth of my daughter Anna. My husband and I had a yearslong tradition of watching CBS Sunday Morning, so as Pete sat by my bed, he turned on the program. After a few minutes, I said to him, halfseriously, “Has Charles Kuralt copy that stresses the national over the local. Life is viewed from 30,000 feet up. But that view is supremely unhelpful most of the time.

Births and deaths, after all, bookend all the stories that occur in between: The family reunions and the harvest; the weather, whether hot, or freezing, comprising late frosts or early springs; the church picnics; the visitors from out of town; wedding anniversaries; the really wonderful sermon the good reverend gave last week; the neighbor who is on chemo again, but putting up a spirited fight; the college scholarships; the high school graduations and the longedfor arrival of grandchildren.

Of course, journalism also shines a spotlight on what is wrong, and what needs to be fixed. After all, there are some people who you can’t afford to take your eyes off of for a minute. So investigative reporting is necessary and vital. But so is all the rest.

One of the great tragedies of the demise of journalism during this era is the decline of reporting all the little/big stories that cry out to be told.

Journalism as an industry has laid off many thousands of reporters and editors in the last dozen years and the Covid-19 pandemic has unfortunately accelerated the trend.

It won’t tell me when the pothole on my street will be filled, for example, before it swallows my Volkswagen, or whether the soup kitchen needs more helping hands, or when the local farmer’s

So here’s to The Pintlala Ledger, The Camp Hill Chronicle, The Beatrice Legacy and The Packer’s Bend Times.

I salute your faith, your energy, your coming deadlines, and all the great stories, small and large, that make life worth living and chronicling. Godspeed to your coming good work.