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September 22, 2017

I didn't inherit my love of the news from my parents. For that, my grandpa gets credit. When he and my grandma visited my mom, sister and I in Springfield, Missouri, weekend mornings meant pancake and bacon breakfasts and an early run to Smitty's for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

I remember marveling at the power of this thing that he went out of his way to get. By the time my sister and I woke up, the funnies were waiting.

Josh Stearns got a lot of people thinking about those early memories of news this week when he tweeted this simple question: What is your memory of local news from childhood?

Stearns, associate director of the Public Square program at Democracy Fund, said he started thinking about this one night while watching his kids fall asleep. 

He has thought about kids and the news before, as has Poynter's Melody Kramer, who posed a similar question a few years ago. 

"I have some stray thoughts about how so many of these stories are about broadcast and print and people encountering local news with family, or at school or at community events," he said, "and how local news for many people was part of a connection to others."

Some great memories came in response to Stearns' question, including the days of praying hard for school to be called off because of snow, making it in the newspaper for some accomplishment at school and feeling personally connected to local news anchors. (Shoutout to KY3's Steve Grant and Lisa Rose.)

After a few very big news weeks, it was fun to see what people remembered. Want to add yours? Email, tweet or comment below and I'll add them.

"I learned to read before I went to school, by reading (first the comics, then the news) in The Courier-Journal, which was in Louisville, 125 miles away, but at that time (late 1950s) circulated in all 120 Kentucky counties," Al Cross wrote in. Cross is director for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. "At about that time, our town, Albany, pop. 2,000, got a radio station, and from our house I could see the tower light come on every evening. It was a 'sundowner' station, so soon before that it broadcast the sign-off script. I memorized it, and my father took me to the station at the age of 6 to recite it. I froze up. But five years later, I became the Little League scorekeeper and correspondent for the Clinton County News, and WANY broadcast the games. Its platform was the best place to call hits and errors, and I was called on to report substitutions. Eventually, I became a color commentator and, at 13, a full-fledged announcer. Got back into newspapers at 18, and have been there since, more or less."

 

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Kristen Hare
Kristen Hare is Poynter's director of craft and local news. She teaches local journalists the critical skills they need to serve and cover their communities.…
Kristen Hare

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