Being editor of Herald, Local an exciting opportunity

By DAVID PANIAN
davidp@tecumsehherald.com

TECUMSEH — Hello, there.

It’s been about a month since I was announced as the new editor of The Tecumseh Herald and Clinton Local. While putting together the summary of my career and personal interests for the announcement story, I came to an odd realization: What I was doing was kind of like writing an obituary.

I have sometimes thought that I should prewrite my obituary. It would save my family or a funeral director some time and effort. It also would allow me to work in as many of the euphemisms for dying as I can since we’re not supposed to use them in news reporting: passed away, shuffled off this mortal coil, pushing up daisies and others from Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch, and one my maternal grandfather used, “gone to his reward.” Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone will be describing me as having beautiful plumage. Maybe 30 years ago, but not so much anymore. Ah, the ravages of time and genetics.

But I also got to thinking, how cool is it that, whenever my obituary is published, it’ll say that I was editor of the Herald and Local? Both papers have served their communities well for a long time, and our readers are loyal and care about what happens here. That’s something that newspapers need to survive. We also have an owner in Rex Crist who wants to grow the business. Believe me, that’s no small thing when it comes to the news media, and it was one of the reasons I decided to make the move a little more than a year ago from The Daily Telegram to the Herald.

Being the editor of a paper was not a career goal when I decided to be a journalist. I originally wanted to be a sports columnist or baseball writer at a major metro paper. I remember being in my journalism class at Midland High School one day when I realized that people get paid to go to games and write about them. I thought, “I can do that!”

The sports part mostly didn’t happen. It turns out those jobs are really hard to get. I did get to cover some sports when I was at the Telegram, but after a few years of working at a non-journalism job, I was happy to start my newspaper career in January 2000 as a news reporter at the Telegram.

When I started working at the Telegram, I mostly covered Tecumseh and Clinton. I remember sitting with Jim Lincoln Jr. at the media table during Tecumseh City Council meetings and next to Maryann Habrick while covering Clinton Village Council meetings. They were very welcoming, which, as competitors, they didn’t have to be.

Now, all these years later, when Jackie Koch announced that she would be retiring, I found myself intrigued and even a bit excited by the idea of being the editor. There’s a great legacy to protect and to build upon here that made this role appealing.

Now that I am in the role that Jim and Maryann so ably performed, I know I have a lot to live up to. I hope the experience I’ve gained over the past 26 years will give me the wisdom to know what stories to cover. I don’t anticipate that we’ll make any radical changes in the way we report the news.

We are looking at modernizing our online presence. That’ll be a big change for the Local and more of an incremental change for the Herald. Also, by being part of the Meadowbrook Media group with The Exponent in Brooklyn and The Advance in Blissfield, we’ll be able to do some things that would have been challenging individually. You can expect to see us collaborate on some stories that affect all of our communities.

We’ll still cover government meetings and do previews of community events. We’ll do profiles of interesting people, organizations and businesses. We’ll report on the things that readers can’t look away from: fires, crashes and crime. And, of course, we’ll have obituaries. I just hope that it’ll be a very long time before you find out how I met my maker and joined the choir invisible after kicking the bucket and becoming one with the Force and that it’ll be just as long before any of you out there find your biography on Page 2.

It’s an exciting time to be in local media, at least here at Meadowbrook Media. I hope you’ll stick with us to stay up to date on what’s happening in your community. And if you have a story idea to share, please feel free to pass it along by email at davidp@tecumsehherald.com or by phone at 517-423-2174 ext. 212.