BRATTLEBORO-Ask any journalist: It is almost impossible to get a good photo of documents being signed. Oh, you can play with camera angles and aperture settings and the like, but you're never going to get a satisfying image. Nothing you do, no matter how accomplished a photographer you might be, will give you an image that actually tells the story.
The moment is an inflection point. What happens before that moment, and what happens after - those are the stories.
On a recent hot, sunny Friday in Brattleboro, I nevertheless tried to get some good photos in the crowded upstairs office of attorney Christopher Dugan, who shuffled a seemingly endless series of papers to and from the board members of Vermont Independent Media (VIM), the nonprofit organization that publishes The Commons, and Randy and Vicki Capitani, the longtime owners of The Deerfield Valley News, a community newspaper based in Wilmington.
After months of negotiations, everyone at the table signed the papers that made the deal complete.
And now we can say, proudly, that since June 27, VIM has been responsible for the Valley News, as readers call it. For the past couple of weeks, it has quietly been our new sister newspaper as Randy and Vicki took some time to tell the people they wanted to tell about how they were orchestrating their retirement.
We could say a lot about the grandiose plans for our new paper - if we had any.
While we have many small practicalities and necessary under-the-hood changes, we intentionally plan to take things slow, to listen, to get this publication under our skin. To be quiet and listen and learn.
And in every meaningful context other than legal, it's not our new paper. It really belongs to the community.
* * *
Very early in my career, I had a mentor and dear friend who taught me that when a newspaper is sold, "you're buying a masthead, the files, and your subscribers' and advertisers' trust."
That's it.
Every week, I am reminded of that reality when I click the commands to create new files for the pages of the next issue of The Commons. My screen will display 14 to 24 blank pages, more or less, depending on advertising.
Over a period of a day or two, those blank pages transform into reality, and every Tuesday afternoon, they become a tangible product as they roll off the press or appear onto our website.
That happens only because of the people who create it. They use their judgment, their instinct, their self-awareness, their knowledge of community, their five senses, and raw, brute force of will to shape ideas into words, words into sentences, and sentences into articles.
News will still be out in the wild, available to you as a firehose of raw, untamed data, images, photos, and comments (so many comments). But an issue of a newspaper captures, evaluates, and contains this data. It presents it, frames it, contextualizes it. And it preserves it as a verbal and visual time capsule of local history.
Over time, a newspaper becomes known and trusted because of its content, because of its vibe, because of its people. All those factors feed one another, and the newspaper grows and improves over time. It finds its voice. It finds its place.
That's how a newspaper becomes a community institution - and that institution can survive and thrive only as long as the people are there to breathe life into each new issue. The next week comes, and the pages will once again be blank.
So if good people suddenly leave, or if people stop making good decisions and connecting with the community the newspaper covers, it doesn't matter how good the previous issue of the paper was.
It's going to be a different newspaper. It will be one that will not be any better - and one that very likely will be worse. Much worse.
* * *
When they decided they wanted to retire, Randy and Vicki Capitani sought us out first, a gesture that means so much to me, both personally and professionally. I'd like to think they trust us not to handle things that way.
And really, trust has been the theme - the cornerstone - of this whole transaction. The whole exercise was driven by both parties' mutual trust that ending up here - with VIM at the helm of the Valley News - would be the right thing to do for readers, for the community, and for the future of the publication. And with benefits for The Commons, as well.
While Randy and Vicki are looking to retire, they hope to remain involved with VIM's board of directors. Their DNA will always be part of the Valley News. The door will always be open. We will need them.
Of course we want VIM, The Commons, and The Deerfield Valley News to flourish. But a newspaper can't flourish unless it remains one with its community, its readers, its contributors, its advertisers.
If that doesn't just scream "mission-driven nonprofit," I don't know what does.
* * *
So for now, Randy and Vicki are beginning their transition, over several months, winding their time down as they teach us as much as they can about what has worked for them and why.
We are so fortunate that Mike Eldred will be staying on as editor. He's been the cornerstone of the paper's news coverage for a number of years, and I'm looking forward to the gentle cross-pollination of both newsrooms. We've talked about ways we can work on projects together so we're not duplicating efforts for both papers.
Lynn Barrett, a force of nature for publishing, marketing, and public relations and VIM's previous board president, is taking over the marketing and advertising duties.
And I'm also excited that as of this week, I will be spending a few extra hours as VIM's interim editorial and production director, working with both newspapers to make sure this transition is smooth and in every way possible helps both the Valley News and The Commons, separately and together, serve Windham County and all our readers. It's a moment to honor.
In the end, that's why Lynn and I were both snapping photos (to the amusement of Attorney Dugan, who observed that he had never seen so many cameras at a closing).
The photos might not capture the complexity of a legacy of building a publication, its readership, its service to community. But they do capture the complicated emotions of a table of people who asked, "How can we make this happen for the community?" - and ended up doing just that.
And what a range of emotion their faces show: apprehension, sadness, excitement, terror, joy.
The weight of the knowledge that we have so much work to do. The satisfaction that we're here to do it.
The trust that if we do it right, it will work.
Jeff Potter has edited The Commons since 2008 and has been working in and around newspapers and other publications for more than 40 years. He's still learning.
This News column by Jeff Potter was written for The Commons.