Newark Advocate 2020 for PROUD Magazine

Newark Advocate 2020 for PROUD Magazine

Jeff Gill

 

In 1820, James Monroe was President of the United States, Ethan Allen Brown was governor of Ohio, and Newark was still six years away from being incorporated as a town.

 

Native Americans of the Shawnee and Wyandot tribes still lived in the northern and western parts of the state, often traveling through Licking County, which was itself just twelve years old. Five years earlier the original log courthouse was replaced by a modest two story structure, but Courthouse Square around it was still marked by ponds and bogs, surrounded by mostly log structures barely more ornate than pioneer cabins.

 

And it was in 1820 that "The Newark Advocate" was first published, in a simple sturdy brick building on the square. This intrepid business venture was the brainchild of Benjamin Briggs, a native of Pennsylvania who arrived in Newark's earliest days to make his mark, find a career, and start a newspaper: one that is today the county's oldest continuously operated business.

 

Briggs owned and edited "The Advocate" for thirty-six years, and as a sign of different times and journalistic expectations, he was elected mayor of Newark twice, and was voted at different times to both the Ohio House and Senate, as well as postmaster. His was a vigorous and partisan editorship, advocating for development projects like the Ohio & Erie Canal or the National Road through Licking County, as well as local efforts such as new church buildings and improved streets downtown.

 

In the early 1800s down through the first part of the 1900s, newspapers were almost without exception partisan, and "The Advocate" was a Democratic Party paper. Through the decades, other party and constituency publications flourished – at one point Newark had over twenty newspapers with names like "The Rasp" or "The Constitutionalist" or "The Reveille and Woolgrower"  – but after World War I the rise of a more dispassionate journalistic ethic led to a bipartisan "Advocate" overshadowing the other party-oriented papers, like the "Newark North American" or "Newark Express."

 

"The Advocate" has outlived its competition in most cases by outworking it: the paper was the first in the county to go from monthly to weekly to daily, and has been a daily for a majority of its publication history. An early adopter of electronic media tools, the news now arrives by email and on browser windows as much as it does on doorsteps or in driveways. Social media and online reading make the entire news environment a constant, never-ending opportunity for readers to connect and advertisers to reach audiences, even as the Advocate's ongoing record of events becomes a public resource in its own right.

 

"The value of having the paper in the area for so many years to the Licking County Library Veterans project is priceless," says Doug Stout, the library's project coordinator. "Through the years many service records, letters and names have been lost to family members and the community. The Advocate archives are one source we use daily for this information. If the Advocate hadn't been around this long, I'd say 40 percent of the information we have wouldn't exist."

 

Advertising along with subscriptions has been the heart of the "Advocate" business model since Briggs' days as editor and owner. After many decades of private ownership, the formation of the Advocate Printing Company saw the business into the Twentieth Century, and "The Newark Advocate" is now part of the USA Today Network. Whether in the print product or the online version, newspaper ads are still a major part of each page, and looking back through the two hundred years of history you learn almost as much from those ads as you do the articles about who we are as a county.

 

The first hundred years you see many advertisements for horses and carriages and the equipment and services that go with them; in the second hundred years, cars and trucks are well represented in the ad sections, while you have trouble finding a livery stable. Through the 1800s, clothiers and haberdashers and milliners are common in the corners of each page promoting their wares; today, banner ads online and sidebars are focused on very different retail angles, from electronics to home delivered groceries.

 

But in the editorial content itself, you hear the spirit of each era speaking both to their subscribers, and also as that "first rough draft of history" credited to journalism. Sometimes that voice is cracked and flawed – The Advocate sadly did not endorse Abraham Lincoln in either 1860 or in 1864 – but you can also hear calls for justice in the 1960s through Op-Eds, and editorial invitations to renewal and re-invigoration as Newark has navigated the end of one industrial era and the beginnings of our information age.

 

Benjamin Briggs, the first editor (and reporter, and circulation manager, and advertising executive, and pressman), was said in Hill's 1881 "History of Licking County" to have been "a clear, forcible writer, much given to the use of strong Saxon words that vigorously expressed his ideas, and he never wrote without having ideas to convey. . . When he chose to be vituperative he generally succeeded." But he was also "identified with every project that tended to the advancement and welfare of the place and its people," and left for Washington an honored representative of Licking County's interests. Today's editor, Benjamin Lanka, wouldn't expect to run for political office while still holding a position of journalistic trust, but he and his staff still honor clear and concrete writing, condemnation when called for, and praise whenever possible. With a volunteer community Editorial Board, "The Newark Advocate" still has strong words and straightforward suggestions about what can improve and enhance the everyday lives of people around today's Courthouse Square and across the county.

 

"Despite the numerous changes in our industry, the staff of The Advocate remains solely focused on telling the stories that matter to Newark and Licking County," says Lanka. "It's easy to say we don't do things like we used to, and that is true. Technology has dramatically changed people's media consumption habits. But what remains true is that we will always be curious about what is going with our local government, with our high school sports teams or with our neighbors. Our mission for our past and our future is to tell those stories the best we can to give people a sense of the community in which they live."

 

From the Briggs era to the present day, you can't help but notice how the interests of "The Advocate" have always "tended to the advancement and welfare of the place and its people."

Faith Works 12-14-19

Faith Works 12-14-19

Jeff Gill

 

The Package – a story

___

 

[This is a piece of fiction, second of four parts, for the Christmas season]

 

It had been a wrapped package on his doorstep, and now Jerry was holding a carefully taped up box, brown cardboard with mailing labels all around, yet each of them carefully marked through with solid dark horizontal lines.

 

The marker cross-outs were enough to make clear the labels weren't to be used, but not scribbled sufficiently to obscure the name and address for where it had gone. Clearly, this was a re-used box. Jerry thought if he went to this address, he might get a clue as to why he'd gotten a brightly wrapped but unlabeled box on his front porch.

 

He'd hesitated even to open the wrapping paper, but as a widower with grown children out of town, he couldn't figure out why he'd have gotten a present delivered like this, and feared that it simply had been mis-delivered the night before, not intended for him.

 

So Jerry, after peeling away the wrapping paper, found a well-sealed box already having been used, and he was hesitant to cut the packing tape and find out what was inside. Whatever it was, it wasn't ticking or fragile. Something loose but relatively filling the space inside, thunking back and forth as he carried the box to the car.

 

The address of the last recipient, now crossed out, was not too far across town, and he was there in minutes. Awkwardly tucking the taped box under his arm, Jerry walked up the sidewalk to the small, neat house and rang the bell. After a longish delay, but noise enough inside to keep him standing there, the door swung open.

 

An older woman in a wheelchair had pulled the door around with clearly a practiced air; she was used to her particular position, and seemed quite comfortable in greeting him. "Yes, can I help you?" she smiled.

 

Jerry explained the predicament that had led him to her door, and with a quick once-over glance she pulled the door on around, swiveled back, and asked him to come in through the screen door. Once inside and the doors both shut, she pointed to a chair and he sat down, finishing his story, and setting the box on a low table between them.

 

"Yes, I remember getting that package, from my daughter in Oklahoma. But it was just some cookies and fudge and a few magazines she knew I'd like. I tossed the box out with the trash." She shrugged with that telling, and then looked again at the box, and back at Jerry. "I guess you'll just have to open it up. I can't imagine any other solution to your little mystery, but you've gotten my curiosity going."

He smiled, reached into his pocket, got out the penknife again, and very deliberately slit open the tape across the top, and putting the implement away, flipped open the flaps.

 

Inside was a pair of boots. They were not new, but clean and perhaps even with a bit of polish or just a recent leather treatment on them. The laces were new, and tied into neat bows. Jerry picked the boots up out of the box, and there was nothing inside at all otherwise, just a tag tied to the leather loop on the heel of one of the pair. "Kretschmer Shoe Shop," he read.

 

"I know where that is, on the other side of town. My late husband used to get his work boots repaired there; I didn't know if they were still open." She reached out and turned the tag. "But the name and address are removed, there's just a number and the shop address here."

 

They both sat and looked at the unremarkable boots together for a moment. Then Jerry said "well, I guess I'm going to the shoe shop. Sorry to trouble you, and Merry Christmas. I appreciate your being willing to talk to me."

 

"It's certainly an interesting story, and I hope you can tell me someday how it ends; there has to be a reason, doesn't there?" Jerry agreed, and putting the boots back in the box, got up out of his chair and began to move towards the door. He noticed a pair of larger boxes just beside the door on the inside, and commented on them.

 

"Oh, those are coats from my church," she said, "I had someone who was going to take to the Salvation Army, but that family had a funeral come up out of town. I'm trying to find someone else to get them there."

 

Jerry immediately felt the relief of being able to provide a kindness in return to one already received, and said "Oh, that's right on the way to the shoe shop; I'd be happy to take them."

 

[to be continued]

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think is up with the boots at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

 

Notes from my knapsack 12-19-19

Notes from my knapsack 12-19-19

Jeff Gill

 

Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow

___

 

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is one of those standards which has gone through a variety of transformations, from Judy Garland singing it in "Meet Me in St. Louis" to Frank Sinatra wanting a more upbeat version for a holiday album to Esperanza Spalding with John Legend more recently.

 

Hugh Martin was working in an atmosphere, in 1944, similar to the sentiments that drove "I'll Be Home for Christmas" the year before: service members in all the branches of the military and many other civilians besides scattered across the globe in a world war, hoping and praying for a swift and happy return home. Some would make it, others would not; a few would be there in person and others "if only in my dreams."

 

Christmas 1944 we now know was just a few months away from the war's end, but they couldn't have been certain it would be that soon . . . and in fact quite a few still didn't come home until after Christmas 1945. "Someday soon, we all will be together, if the Lord allows" was one version of the original song, muted in religious content to "if the fates allow" for the movie.

 

But by 1957 both World War II and the Korean Wars were both over, and high hopes for an end to war were common, and in the enthusiastic optimist of the Fifties, Sinatra didn't want to muddle through anything. He wanted hope and aspiration, so he went back to Martin and asked him to brighten up one line.

 

The result? "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough!" Aspirational enough for you? Up and out and onwards, with glitter and joy and a reach to the very top. Perfect for the times, Frank thought.

 

God bless her, Ella Fitzgerald a few years later knew that not everyone in America was just reaching for the tall branches, and she reached back . . . and sang a version that included both lines. We have to muddle through somehow, and we want to reach that highest bough. Ella always did know her audiences.

 

Today we can talk to people on the other side of the world at the Thanksgiving table, as my family did spread seven time zones apart, through screens and signals and stories. We still miss each other, but in such a different way than was the case for our parents' and grandparents' generation. There's a wistfulness and longing that can't be replicated.

 

But we do still move and relocate and separate, for all that email and texting can keep us together. Our scattered families and spread out networks of friends and colleagues and acquaintances need connections and coherence and comfort. Judy was singing to Margaret in that old movie because she wanted to help her feel better at Christmastime. The Smith family may not have ended up leaving old St. Louis and stays to see the 1904 World's Fair, but we all know that someday most of them are probably going to end up living somewhere else, with Christmas memories what keeps them united.

 

This time of year, we think about holiday seasons past, and those who aren't with us anymore, and work on how to include people new to our traditions and celebrations, which can be hard. But we'll muddle through somehow!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's hoping your hearts will be light! Hang a shining memory on his virtual mailbox at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 12-7-19

Faith Works 12-7-19

Jeff Gill

 

The Package – a story

___

 

[This is a piece of fiction, in four parts, for the Christmas season]

 

On the doorstep Jerry reached down to pick up a wrapped package.

 

The red wrapping paper with green accents was neatly, even meticulously folded on the sides, smooth and pretty across the top. He set it down on the bench by the door inside his house.

 

After closing the door, and slipping off his ratty old work boots he'd gone to the mailbox in, Jerry picked up the wrapped package and slowly turned it around, finding no label, no tag, no markings at all.

 

Inside, something heavy thudded about softly as he upended the box, not quite packed in tightly. Too late, he thought about a prank or even a bomb, but the package seemed quite festive, inoffensive, ordinary in a holiday sort of way.

 

He set it back down, then picked it up and carried it into the living room. Since his wife's passing years ago, he'd lived much of his life in this room. It was small but large enough; her recliner still sat to one side of his, and the TV was a newer one the kids had gotten him, but most of the pictures and oddments on the shelves were what she'd put in place. There was an ottoman he usually left in front of her chair that he pulled over in front of his seat, and set the package down on it.

 

What should he do with it? He didn't have a tree up yet; he normally had a small artificial one he put on the side table, after ceremoniously pulling it out a ways farther from the wall and laying down the extra large doily that was in the bottom of the china cupboard. Lights he'd stopped putting up after the youngest got married, and he added a string or two around the tree if they came back, but if he went to one of their houses he usually didn't bother.

 

The package could sit at the foot of the table until Christmas, but it would really be in the way for weeks then. He usually got a few packages in the mail from the kids, and his brother in Idaho, and just opened them as they came and set the gifts unwrapped on the counter until Christmas day, when he'd put them away that evening as he would the little tree. There hadn't been a wrapped package in the house for some time.

 

Or, he thought, fingering the little penknife in his pocket, the one he almost lost at the airport and cost him twenty bucks to mail to himself a couple of years ago, twenty times what it had cost him forty years ago, he could open it.

 

Slice the tape, undo the wrapping paper, and see what was inside. It was for him, right? Or was it?

 

The fact that there was no name unnerved Jerry. Could it be a mis-delivered present? The houses on either side of him might be the actual destination, but one was a currently empty rental, and the other full of kids and toys on the porch and hard to mistake for his spare and simple front stoop. Across the street was a commercial building now empty but for storage, and a couple of houses farther down towards the corner whose occupants he hadn't met yet, not that he'd tried that hard.

 

Of course, if it's someone else's present, it would be a shame for him to find out on Christmas morning. It made more sense to open it now, see what it was or even for whom it was intended, and take care of it. The decision made, the paper came off with the knife easily, and revealed… a box.

 

The box was plain cardboard, marked for mailing, and looked like it had been used for just that. A careful line had been drawn, though, through the bar code stickers, and the address label lines; Jerry could still read the name and street perfectly clearly. It wasn't anyone he knew.

 

It was taped shut all around, and at this new obstacle he paused, and put away his knife. The mystery continued; it wasn't clearly for him, but it might be, even though there was no indication who would be sending such a package to him. The address was in town, not nearby but barely a mile away.

 

He decided he'd go to that house, and just ask: hey, did you drop off a package for me, and if so, thanks and why?

 

[to be continued]

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think is in the package at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 11-30-19

[Getting ahead for Thanksgiving week, expecting advanced deadlines . . . pax, jag]

Faith Works 11-30-19

Jeff Gill

 

Can we disagree without being disagreeable

___

 

Tomorrow, Dec. 1, is the first Sunday of Advent for many Christians. In this column, you've got four weeks of holiday good cheer ahead, and then we're into a new year.

 

Before we drift into our seasonal daze of sugarplums and angel songs, I might just want to disagree with you. About what? Well, as Marlon Brando said in a movie once about rebellion, "whaddaya got?"

 

Thinking about a persistent disagreement I've been in for a while on social media with a couple of people, I have found myself reflecting on that fact that for centuries, it was actually kind of hard to find a major difference of opinion. You could subscribe to a periodical – I'm reading my way, page by page, through the 1820s right now – but they were monthly at best, and usually aligned according to faction or ideology or theology. Disagreements were featured briefly in their pages, just enough to allow for their dismissal in detail.

 

And in your average Ohio county community, you had mostly unanimity. I know, I'm certain of it, there were other opinions, but they tended to be kept quiet. There's documentation of that in letters and diaries, but it is told to support the fact that public disagreement was rare, and mostly "not done."

 

Every two years, an election season would whip folks up into a disputational frenzy, but it seemed to pass quickly. Religious revivals swept the land, but as I read my trove of 1820s and 1830s journals, they didn't seem to be a subject of everyday conversation. It was more a question of public meetings, sermons preached, and when a couple of key leaders changed their sense of how baptism or communion should be, the village or church as a whole followed suit.

 

Today, if you want to hear someone vigorously disputing what you think, just post it online. They'll find you if you don't think you know anyone of a different opinion.

 

There's a painting, made into a print, which I have an obscure fascination with titled "Politics in an Oyster House" which could be depicting a tavern on Courthouse Square in Newark, or a stagecoach inn along the National Road. An older gentleman is abstractedly looking off into the snug, the common room, as across the table, about to kick over a spittoon, a bewhiskered younger man leans in making a vehement point. It's from 1840 or so, and became popular because of how it seemed to sum up the peculiarity of America, where people took their polemics so seriously.

 

But it wasn't part of everyday life. The oyster house or courthouse, newspaper or magazine, perhaps, but it didn't consumer people as they shoed horses at the forge or harvested corn as the first snows fell. Or so it seems.

 

Our challenge today is that disputes and disagreements are eating away at us from get-up to go-to-bed, and even for too long after we've put on our night cap and pulled up the covers. Through phones and tablets and devices, we can hear the shrill call of "you're wrong, and here's why!"

 

I think this is what's made the whole "fake news" debate take on such unpleasant urgency. For at least a century or more it was understood that news came with a partisan spin. Independent journalism, both political or cultural, is a fairly recent historical development. The American experience has largely been until the last few decades a place where each periodical came with an official position, and if you didn't agree with that stance . . . you didn't read that paper. Or if you wanted to find disagreement, you had to go looking for it.

 

We've lost much of that non-partisan ideal in news coverage, but we've not yet figured out what to replace it with. And as a preacher who writes, I've done articles for denominational and religious outlets for years: most of them don't exist anymore. So the blogs and websites that solicit content today usually have a very strong stance (not to say bias), and the combination of partisan output that way with the ongoing argument that is social media and the comment threads below posts and tweets, we just don't now what to make of. Yet!

 

The Newark Advocate is entering, in 2020, our two hundredth year of continuous publication. For much of its life, it was a Democratic Party paper, though you might be surprised to go back and read what that meant in application in, say, 1859. I'm glad in the ongoing disputes of modern life, they make room for some conversation about faith, opinion, and truth.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you do to read different viewpoints at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.