This Is the Dawning of the Age of Advancius

To Infinity... and Beyond!

By Drew Gallagher

ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Jeremy Thomas/Unsplash

This week marks a new chapter in the future of the FXBG Advance. Founding Father Marty Davis is leaving his lovechild to blossom without him, with the sincere hope that The Advance grows as fast as the data centers Marty is going forth to herald in a new Virginia publication, The Virginia Free Press, where he will be lauded and paid handsomely to convince the tree-hugging masses that a faster Google search is more important than potable water.

I am one of those tree huggers, but I sincerely wish Marty all the best because he had the foresight to see that I had the talent and the financial flexibility (to be read: unpaid) to become Virginia’s #1 Humorist in this very space. I will raise a beer and my cell phone flashlight in his honor.

Intrepid reporter Adele Uphaus is also leaving The Advance to pursue other opportunities for shedding light on the injustices in this world and in our community. Any organization that hires Adele is fortunate to have her. Any school board that doesn’t want its skeletons exposed or dynamics investigated might want to begin the whitewashing process before Adele starts her new gig at The Fredericksburg Free Press (not to be confused with Marty’s Virginia Free Press) in a month.

Some astute readers might have calculated that with the departures of Marty and Adele there is going to be a whole lot of copy walking out the door of The Advance. Not only will there will be shoes to fill, but pages too. Even more astute readers might have also recognized that with the departures of Marty and Adele there is opportunity for budding journalists…and money to be spent on heretofore unpaid humor columnists.

Advance Publisher Leigh Anne Van Doren and the Advance Board plan to build on the momentum that Marty and Adele helped create and continue the publication’s mission to fill the gaping void created by the soul-sucking efforts of the publishers of the once-proud Free Lance-Star newspaper.

(Note to Lee Enterprises, owner of The Free Lance-Star: if you want to consider this column for syndication, I can change “soul-sucking” to “soul-saving.”)

When Marty Davis founded The Advance three years ago, it was with an eye toward covering local news since that no longer appeared to be a priority for a media conglomerate that was firing reporters faster than Kristi Noem was gunning down farm animals. And The Advance was able to make a difference because of its reporting. Remember when book burning was all the rage in Spotsylvania County? Don’t forget to thank current Spotsy School Board members Megan Jackson, Belen Rodas, and Carol Medawar—and The Advance—for putting a stop to all that.

What Leigh Anne Van Doren hopes to do moving forward is hire more reporters as well as give young journalists an opportunity to cut their teeth on stories beyond college campuses. She also, surprisingly, says she wants to pay Virginia’s #1 Humorist!

(Special Notice to My Deadbeat Friends Who Make Me Send Them My Sunday Column for Free and Then Bitch About Not Getting It Until Later in The Day, Aka My Sister: you can subscribe for a mere $80 a year, and you get this column emailed to you every Sunday morning along with a set of Ginsu knives. I’ve been informed that our attorneys require the following disclaimer: I made the knives part up.)

Leigh Anne has already announced the hiring of a new editor to herald the dawning of a new Age of Advancius. And as Buzz Lightyear so famously said: “To infinity…and beyond!”

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to be here on Sundays—so long as they make good on their promise to pay me—and I’ll fill you in with dirt on the new Advance editor in next week’s column.