RiverBender Blog: I Remember the Stories

This past weekend, I got the opportunity to see a story come full-circle.

On Saturday, I attended a ceremony at Roxana High School where the Class of 1966 dedicated a bench to classmates they lost in the Vietnam War. I started following this story in September of last year, when the bench was nothing more than an idea that a few Class of 66 graduates had. I wrote a story about it then. Over the next six months, they fundraised, spread awareness and eventually installed the bench that now sits on the Roxana High School campus.

As I stood there, watching the dedication ceremony, I was struck by how cool it was that I got to see this come to fruition. In the national news cycle, most stories are covered for a day before they’re forgotten. Local journalism allows you to follow people for a long time, to stay up-to-date on their lives and their projects. Local journalism immortalizes the people and the towns we cover.

These people and towns stick with me, too. I’ve written hundreds of stories in the time since I’ve been at RiverBender.com, and many of those stories are on my mind long after I file them.

There’s Rose Bensman, whose 100th birthday party I crashed, who hugged me out of pure joy after she learned about a tree planted in her honor. There’s Jean Sommer and Yelena Gass-Bronstein, two local women who took the time to share with me about their health issues and search for a kidney donor. I think often of Matthew Butler, the unhoused attorney who slept on the stairs of the Madison County Courthouse.

These stories hold onto me. I’m honored I got to tell them, and I can’t let go of them.

If I do my job right, most people won’t notice the reporter in the corner. The way I see it, I’m there to get information and write down what happened. I’m not there to intrude or become part of the story itself.

But trust me: Reporters remember the stories. It can be a powerful experience for us, too, if we’re lucky, if we open ourselves up to the stories and the moments and the people we cover.

There’s a passage in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a book by Stephen Chbosky that all young people should read. It’s one of my favorite books, and I always come back to this quote: “I know these will all be stories someday, and our pictures will become old photographs…But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening.”

This is happening, and I get to be there to tell it. What a gift.

It’s wonderful to be a small part of these moments, and even cooler that I get to help keep these stories alive. I’m thankful for the people who let me into their lives for months or hours or even just a few minutes so I can learn and write the story that needs to be told. I’m thankful to be a part of that.

Local journalism has an important role in the journalism landscape, part of which is to tell these stories. I’m honored to be trusted with them, and I can’t wait to see what stories come next.

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