KENNEY: In Fredericksburg or Journalism, Telling Our Own Story Matters
FXBG Advance Co-founder Shaun Kenney on what the Advance has restored to Virginia Journalism that for too long has been lost, as the paper enters a new evolution.
By Shaun Kenney
BOARD MEMBER
When the Richmond News Leader finally merged into the Richmond Times-Dispatch after it was decided that the grand old dame could not be sustained as an evening paper, the obituary for the publication edited by no less a name than Douglas Southall Freeman ran as follows: “[T]his distinctive journalistic voice will be missed. Its disappearance represents yet another advance of homogenization and yet another erosion of the sense of place in American journalism. Ave atque vale!”
Gone was the last newspaper to entertain a conservative voice in Virginia. Over the next two decades, the print media never dreamed that their ascendancy would have a final chapter. The Richmond Times-Dispatch built a grand new headquarters in the heart of Richmond itself, in Fredericksburg the Free Lance-Star built a massive facility on William Street, and across the commonwealth there was an editorial line that saw itself in resistance to the sudden yet vibrant shift to the right.
Despite the editorial gatekeepers, that is.
Of course, there were notable exceptions to be found around those who loved ideas and the collision of those ideas. Paul Akers should be remembered as one of the last great editors of Virginia, and certainly was a breath of fresh air for Fredericksburg as her political leaders ascended to power in the early 2000s. Akers was a sort of mentor to myself as a young man, tempering my Zarathustran-like insistence with the insight that even if correct, others might indeed have a different view.
Not just a different view, but reasons why they have come to those conclusions. Not just reasons, but experiences, travails, stories, interests, backgrounds, educations, cultures, and the whole panoply of the human experience that one can most certainly find right here in the Fredericksburg area. Looking hard enough isn’t enough. One must go around and ask, listen, and place those thoughts and experiences alongside one’s own for a while.
Today much of that legacy is gone. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is owned by a conglomerate in Iowa and no longer even located in Richmond. The Free Lance-Star sublets from a property manager attached to the Silver Companies. Even the Washington Post finds itself a satrapy to Amazon. Independent journalism is hard to find.
What Martin Davis has helped build with the Fredericksburg Advance is a breath of fresh air precisely because his editorial style sought the “why-behind-the-why” without knuckling down to the bullies and demagogues that seem to have possessed our discourse, from Washington to Richmond to the cheap local imitators of same. Winston Churchill used to remark that journalists had no obligation to be neutral between the fire and the fire brigade, yet at the same time he recognized that not every dispute is a fire, even if it is useful to demagogues to cage every dispute as such.
Where Marty and I truly bonded was over the book banning scandal in the Spotsylvania School Board, championed by people who claimed to have read Chaucer yet mysteriously could never spell the great man’s name correctly. Such puritanical efforts certainly did target books that could only be categorized as inappropriate, yet in their zeal would ban the literature of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and even holy writ itself (one bon mot even suggested that the Book of Genesis should be edited to remove the smut, pace Moses, I suppose). Thanks to the coverage of this publication, the book banners were put to pasture and the tone of the discourse changed rapidly.
If one could put their finger on the charisma of the Fredericksburg Advance it is that we are all passionately committed to ideas and public discourse, not for their own sake, but rather because this amazing little piece of Virginia has given so much to our idea of America. Our history as a staging ground for the Second World War is more profound than most realize. The impact of what many Fredericksburg natives still refer to as “the War” — and for places of the world where the violence and irrationality of warfare has touched the earth, such characterizations are nearly universal — still carves into the surface and topography of our region where the sacrifice to free this nation of the idea that the human person and human spirit can be owned and possessed is still both an unfinished and unrealized work.
That the Virginia Founding Fathers walked these streets, debated the meaning of freedom, from Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom to George Washington toying with a hatchet and spuriously eyeing the local cherry trees — an anachronism, but one we should prefer to believe — defines not just our aspirations but the character of those aspirations. From the first moment an indentured laborer turned the soil to build the low-hanging wall around the town and the early farmers who built Fredericksburg so as not to pay the tolls and fees of Governor Alexander Spotswood along the Mine Road from Germanna, to the first Native American tribes bartering over beads and copper with the first settlers from Jamestown, to a time where the Powhatan Confederacy were spearing shad in the fishing traps built by their forefathers, this area has a unique story to tell and a unique way of telling that story.
I refuse to believe that the stories we have to tell and share are the monopoly of those who want to give a “non-partisan” and flat view of that story. For myself, Fredericksburg is and will always be my home. The area has grown tremendously over the last three decades, yet its soul remains intact despite the challenges of that growth.
This is where the stories should be told and by those who have a deep love for this area and its people, both come-heres and been-heres, by those who appreciate its diversity in experience, culture, views, and thought.
As the Fredericksburg Advance transitions into new leadership, the writers and professionals who have gathered around this public square owe a debt of thanks to Martin Davis and Adele Uphaus both for articulating and crystalizing what so many in this community have sought, especially in the demise of the old Free Lance-Star as it has shifted from community newspaper to commoditized property. No one should be surprised that the heart of the old FLS has found itself a new home inside the Advance.
Drew Gallagher and his humor, Clay Jones and his cartoons, Donnie Johnson and his perspective from the periphery, Angela Davis and her movie reviews, Evelyn Clarke and Penny A Parrish and their books reviews, Phil Huber and his insight, Hank Silverberg and his precision for getting at a thing, Bruce Saller on the environment, and most of all the tremendous work done with The New Dominion Podcast which has served as the clearinghouse and spirit of the multipartisan approach of the Advance. Cori Blanch and Megan Samples have served as the backbone and center of the conversation in ways many will never know.
Adding to these voices will be our new managing editor for the Fredericksburg Advance alongside a series of new columnists focusing on education, gardening, culture, homelessness, local government — but most of all a shared spirit of openness towards ideas and all we are lacking in the national conversation.
Beyond all of this, there is a moving spirit behind the Fredericksburg Advance where people of differing backgrounds, political creeds, sacred traditions, viewpoints, and life experience all share a handful of basic values. That our neighbors are our friends and not our enemies, that disagreement is the starting point for conversation and not its end, that the why behind someone’s why is important, that how we talk about a thing is just as important as the thing we are talking about, and that the great liberal tradition of free minds, free speech, and a free society in a technological age of demagogues, tabloids, and surveillance deserves a fighting chance against enemies great and small.
For decades, there has been a need for local reporting that offers the community news we want to read from names we trust, not managed or commercialized news designed to sell papers or earn clicks. As the internet and then social media eroded the places of pride the legacy media took for granted, there is still a vacuum where citizens still want to be informed — not by a few of us, but by all of us who care about the community.
Nonpartisan journalism is the most partisan viewpoint of all precisely because it defends the status quo. Multipartisan journalism which not only brings all sides together but allows for the perspectives of all sides to be heard is the future of journalism. In fact, it is the only reporting worthy of the name journalism in an era of demagogues who care little for truth and care everything for outcomes and results.
I am very glad to be a part of the Fredericksburg Advance under our chairman, Dr. Craig Vasey, a gentleman who has been a fixture at the University of Mary Washington and whose shared love for philosophy as a discipline has most certainly helped guide our continued growth. Yet if we are all surrounded with great minds, the heart of this publication is and remains with Leigh Ann Van Doren, who has sacrificed a great deal of time and energy to help bind together a group of human beings who have all identified the same problem and are committed to sharing in its solution with excellent reporting and great perspectives.
As the Advance enters its fourth year, we are entering into our strongest fundraising year yet and looking forward to turning the corner with additional reporters and columnists. Our website is about to improve dramatically over the next few weeks. Best of all, our writers are going to be delivering more diverse content than ever before. Obviously, no newspaper survives merely on good wishes, so if local reporting that matters is something you are willing to help, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Or if you truly believe in the mission of multipartisan journalism, consider becoming a sustaining member. Or better still, share what articles you like with your friends and family.
Marty Davis put the spark to a long fuse which citizens in the Fredericksburg area have long known was needed and absent. Ave atque vale! Yet we wish both Marty and Adele the very best of luck, because the fireworks we are about to enjoy here at the Fredericksburg Advance are going to be well worth the effort precisely because we are engaged by the people who give a damn about our home — and should.
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