Advance Morning News
It's Saturday, December 6, 2025 - Christmas Parade Day! Today, the editor on reporting and connections, and the Best of the Week.
SHOE LEATHER: Journalism and Connections
By Martin Davis
This is the first in an occasional series on the journalism craft, taking readers inside the minds and hearts of the writers who cover this region and beyond.
Facts are critical to journalism, but they are not the story. Facts are the skeleton upon which stories are built, and great stories only happen when journalists and their subjects connect.
Read the full story
The Best of the Week
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The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
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And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
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This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”