Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
The Free Lance-Star
On Sunday, the Free Lance-Star (and every newspaper owned by Lee Enterprises) ran a first-person message from the owner and chairman of the board, David Hoffman, extolling the virtues—and necessity—of local news. The headline said it all: “Local news can bring communities together.”
“I know we will not always agree about our communities, our states, our nation and our world,” Hoffman wrote. “But I also believe most of us share more common ground than we realize. When local news helps us see that common ground, and helps us see the good that people are doing around us, it can make our communities stronger.”
He left out the part about newspapers’ essential role in holding government and those in power accountable, but an interesting read nonetheless.
Though not as interesting as Pilar Davis’s feature “Remembering 9/11 from behind the wheel of a commuter van,” about the 45-year history of the longest-running continuous vanpool route serving the FBI Headquarters in the D.C. area—starting in a Stafford commuter lot, and now, after four and a half decades, finally ending its run.
Also worth reading—though like everything else on Fredericksburg.com, there’s a paywall—is Keith Epps’ report on the capture of a man accused of raping massage therapy workers in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania, one back in March, and the other last Monday. The man, Cesar Mario Torres Juarez, was already scheduled for trial later this month on charges of sexual assault and assault and battery from a separate incident in May. The headline and paywalled link: “Man accused of raping massage workers arrested in Spotsylvania.”
The Fredericksburg Free Press
Meanwhile, over at the Fredericksburg Free Press, Taft Coghill posted a killer story that’s not paywalled (no Free Press content is) headlined “Belvedere Plantation’s owners are betting the farm on a data center. Neighbors fear they’ll reap the harvest.” Editors get credit—and the requisite groans—for working double puns into the clever head. Taft gets full credit for his interviews with horrified neighbors and other critics, alongside interviews with the Fulks family, which has operated Belvedere since 1968 and has announced controversial plans to sell out to a data center developer.
“Most of that land is just so pretty,” Taft quotes the Fulks’ next-door neighbor as saying. “When you’re down the road, it’s very, you know, peaceful. There are a lot of cows, a lot of horses, and a lot of farm animals. I think it’s just going to desecrate the land. There’s no coming back from that.”
It’s a must-read, as is Adele Uphaus’s “Maternal mental health is in the news—does the region have enough providers?” The troubling answer, according to Adele’s report, is no.
You might also want to check out Lindley Estes’ “Remains to be seen: St. George’s unveils another chapter of church history.” Granular stuff, definitely of interest to history buffs—and another A+ headline for us punsters.
The Potomac Local News
The Potomac Local News, with its propensity for long, expository headlines, was all in on the crime news over the weekend, starting with “Court Records: First Friday murder suspect is a convicted felon, was out on bond.”
Then there was “Teen killed at packed Manassas First Friday was a bystander in a gunfire exchange, police say,” followed on the non-paywalled section of their website, by an accident story, “Overturned tractor-trailer shuts down I-95 southbound in Stafford, one day after fatal crash at Exit 140.”
