Timothy Hankins

I was recently asked to speak to the Alcoa Rotary Club about the ways the newspaper industry is changing. Here is the text of my talk.

I work in an industry riddled with buzzwords. Maybe you do too … do any of these sound familiar?

Outsourcing, crowdsourcing, dynamic, online, offline, hyper-local, mission-critical, social, network, community …

Community. Stop and think about that for just a second or two.

When did a concept like community become a boardroom cliche? A buzzword. Especially in my particular niche in the newspaper business, we spend a lot of time talking about building online communities, creating social networks and leveraging user-generated content provided by citizen journalists.

But what we overlook, sometimes, is the very simple fact that, more than any other media, newspapers ARE the community.

The newspaper has been the clearinghouse for news, entertainment and opinion for small communities like Blount County for generations. The Daily Times has been a part of the lives of Blount Countians for 125 years. And that kind of history and commitment means the newspaper is not just a business, it’s a part of everyday life for many, many people. The newspaper is the most personal of all media; it’s the life-record of a community. It’s the family bible, recording births, marriages and deaths. It’s the town crier, reporting legal notices and encapsulating the important minutiae of political society that would otherwise fall through the cracks of a world overrun with noise.

In an age when everyone can have a voice it sometimes seems harder than ever to be heard. In a world full of social networking where is the ice cream social? If we’re going to enlist “citizen journalists” to report the news, don’t we need to remember what it means to be a citizen? A member of a community? Someone who has a stake in the well-being of all my neighbors?

Even though I work every day trying to make more information available in more ways to more people using Internet and multimedia technology, I can never forget the simple truth that there is nothing more powerful than the well-told story. And the newspaper, no matter what form it takes — printed, digital delivery, web site, podcast, video or text message, is, at its best, the story of a community.

We journalists often refer to our pieces as stories. It’s an odd name, when you think about it. But I still like it better than the other common name we give our work: article.

Articles are simply objects that may or may not matter. They’re means to other ends and have no intrinsic value. Articles can be anything and belong to anyone; there is no ownership of an article – things only get names when we make them our own.

No one every says “let me tell you my article” – no, it’s always a story when it belongs to someone.

And that’s why it’s such a heady thing to be a journalist. To be in the Newspaper Business.

We are responsible for telling everyone’s story. That’s an awesome responsibility; and a wonderful privilege. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to help many people tell their stories over the years. Every now and then, I go back and look at those stories; I often find I’m moved all over again – both by the story itself and the great honor to be asked to tell it.

When Marine Sgt. Micheal Ferschke gave the “last full measure of devotion” for his country, Blount County mourned the loss of a great hero. And The Daily Times mourned as a citizen of the community mourns. But our call of duty was loud and clear in the midst of the mourning: honor the hero. And we were there with camera and video recorder and pen to document the life, death and remembrance of a man called out of the world too soon. Our tribute to this man, his memory and his family was documented in print and video, saved on paper and online; every tool we had at our disposal was used to tell the story of a man whose life and heroic death would forever be part of the story of our country and this Blount County community.

As a writer and producer I’ve had the unique privilege of meeting and profiling the the faces of leadership in this community.

I met Doug Bochtler, owner of Cherokee Fitness and a retired Major League Baseball player. In his life here, he has found a fulfillment to a passion that developed during his stint in the Major Leagues.

He told me about how, toward the end of his career, he found himself playing double-A ball. His role as a player was changing, and he found himself beginning to act as a coach, even as he wound down his playing career. He discovered that he had been given the opportunity to help young, up and coming players reach their potential. That included the chance to teach future Cy Young Award winners, like Johan Santana. Doug taught Johan to throw a change-up and then sat back and watched him succeed with it. “I drew greater satisfaction watching him do well than if I’d done it myself,” Doug told me. He found that there was no greater satisfaction than watching those he’d mentored achieve their potential. And now he’s doing that for young players here in Blount County, through his atheletic facility and the workshops he is able to hold there.

I’ll never forget what Doug had to say during our interview session: “If everybody’s focus was everybody else, how would that change the world?”

Then there’s Joy Bishop. One of the highest ranking civilians in the Air Force and a lifelong public servant. I had the opportunity to interview Joy on a couple of occasions. “Leadership is love,” Joy told me. And her work in the community proves that she lives by those words. Since she retired here to Blount County she has worked tirelessly to help this community achieve its enormous potential. Her efforts on behalf of the Blount County Public Library, the Chamber of Commerce and many other community groups have changed the face of this community.

And her story is just a part of the story of our community. The story a newspaper tells.

Sometimes, the stories we tell are intimate. They may not seem to affect the whole community when viewed individually, but their impact is immeasurable when one steps back to see them as threads in the tapestry of our communal life.

Buddy the Painting Pony lives on a farm in Blount County. His human, Jessica Drake, an artist and photographer herself, taught Buddy to paint after he was diagnosed with Cushings Disease, an ailment that affects a horse’s ability to shed. Now his paintings sell to art lovers around the world; and a portion of the proceeds go to fund research for the disease he copes with daily.

Buc, a Labrador Retriever, volunteers his time at local schools, helping children learn to read. His calm demeanor and soothing presence help put kids at ease as they read to him. And they learn to read with less stress and more success because of Buc.

Tiffany Denyer started Wilderwood Service Dogs to use her love of animals and ability as a dog trainer to serve children with nuerological impairments. She and her team of volunteers train dogs, many of whom are rescued from shelters, to be companion animals for kids who are autistic or suffer from Ausbergers, brain injuries or other impairments. The lives of children from around the region are better because Blount County has a Wilderwood.

These are the stories your newspaper tells. These are the chapters in the story of Blount County.

The future of the newspaper business is a topic of debate these days. Furloughs and failure is too often the news of the day when newspapers are in the news. The giant newspaper chains seem to be toppling, maybe under thier own weight. Smaller papers struggle to compete against national competition that gains a foothold all too easily thanks to the power of technology.

But that same technology, in the hands of your local newspaper, gives all of us the power to document our history. To tell our stories.

I have no idea who KipsMammaw is, but I feel like I know her. KipsMammaw is a user on our photo sharing site, Spotted.thedailytimes.com. And she has shared photo after photo of her family. She’s used this forum to share, in pictures, the story of her family. I’ve seen Halloween costumes, snowmen, rough housing, and poingant family moments, all in the galleries this user, KipsMammaw, has chosen to share with her community. She’s used the technology her local paper makes available to invite all her neighbors into a deeper sharing in her family’s life.

KipsMammaw, along with hundreds of other users on Spotted, is helping to write the story of this community.

And that’s true citizen journalism. When people share what’s important to them from their everyday life, that’s what makes the story of a community. The local newspaper provides a framework for everyone in the community to document their history and become a part of a community’s life story.

The Daily Times is a rich source of information about what’s going on in our County. And it’s a meeting place for everyone in the area to share what’s going on closest to them.

In a small community, it’s easy to be lulled into thinking things are static. That the picture never changes and the tapestry of life is ancient and unyielding. But every moment in every life changes the picture. Though it seems still, the threads are always shifting and growing, and, when we step back for a moment,we see the moving pictures of the ever-unfolding story of our lives.

There is no story that isn’t worth telling. Every person in this room, and every person in our community has a story. The local newspaper isn’t a gatekeeper, it’s a gateway to the story of Blount County, your story, my story … the stories we tell.

The local newspaper is changing. There’s no doubt that struggles lie ahead as we in the business come up with new ways to understand and leverage the technology that presents us with so many challenges and opportunities. But the ethos of your local newspaper can never change. The local paper’s mission is to be a reliable resource, trusted friend and good neighbor.

Above all, the newspaper is a citizen of the community which it serves.