East Ridge News Online has come a long way since November 2013 when Mimi Lowrey brought Karen House into my living room and asked if I would continue the work that House started.
House, who is not a native to East Ridge, said she was going to be moving to the country and she didn’t want East Ridge News Online, the online publication she started, to just go away. Having been a reporter for both the Chattanooga News-Free Press and the combined Times Free Press, Lowrey thought I was the person to pick up the ball and run with it.
I picked it up and started running. I had no idea how far or how fast I could go.
You see, East Ridge has been the stepchild of the mainstream media for ages. The Times Free Press has neglected East Ridge and other satellite cities in the county (referred to in the newsroom as “puny munies”) assigning interns to “cover” news in these areas. Of course, Chattanooga gets the lion’s share of attention and scrutiny by the TFP and the television stations. I guess that is as it should be from a business standpoint. Bigger city, more readers and viewers.
Initially, people in East Ridge didn’t even know East Ridge News Online (ERNO) existed. As a result only about 400 people were viewing ERNO on a consistent basis. ERNO started a Facbook page to help promote the online newspaper. I then began sharing posts on ERNO with other Facebook groups like Neighborhood Watch, Friends and Neighbors, Concerned Citizens and East Ridge High School. Readership picked up.
More and more people in East Ridge were at least aware that ERNO existed and would through their social media contacts click on stories. In fact, many people I encounter in the community when I’m covering a story associate ERNO with Facebook, which is somewhat disappointing. “Yeah, you’re with Sherrie Graham on Neighborhood Watch,” is a comment I get occasionally. Not exactly, but what the heck.
The bottom line is people are reading.
One of those people, Matthew DeGlopper, contacted me about a year ago via e-mail. I asked him what he thought about ERNO. He gave me his honest opinion. DeGlopper said he didn’t like the logo (the stylized Old English font “ER” that many people associate with East Ridge), he thought the layout was lacking and uninteresting and that the mobile application sucked.
I thanked him for his input and for reading and pretty much discounted his criticism. A few weeks later he e-mailed me again and somewhat apologized for the directness of his approach. He explained that he had a background in website design and offered his expertise if I ever wanted to redesign. I am somewhat of a technophobe and my first impulse was to leave it all alone.
But, I came around to the idea. We met. He went to work with a redesign and last summer we changed the look and the host site of East Ridge News Online. Since that time, ERNO has had 180,000 views.
DeGlopper didn’t stop there. He, like Karen House, are not native Pioneers; he’s a native of Michigan. He pays attention to what’s happening in East Ridge and he’s got ideas about how to improve the community. DeGlopper soon began writing opinion pieces for East Ridge News Online. He is insightful and doesn’t pull punches. DeGlopper speaks his mind and his ideas usually resonate with our readers.
DeGlopper, who never misses a City Council meeting, has written several news stories for ERNO, including covering education, something that he is passionate about.
In his last opinion piece DeGlopper took the city to task for wanting to spend $25,000 on a 95th birthday celebration. Many readers agreed with his opposition to the party. When he called me last week and said that he had a “news” article about the party I was interested in it. DeGlopper had spoken with a city official who told him that the city was reconsidering how much money it would spend, when the party would take place and how it may be financed in part by private business.
It was concise and factual. It was posted on ERNO … briefly.
I got a phone call from the city official that provided the information to DeGlopper. He cried fowl. The official did not know that DeGlopper was going to write a “news” article on his comments. The official said he thought that DeGlopper only wrote “opinion” pieces for ERNO. The official asked that the article be taken down from ERNO because he was under the impression he was talking to a “citizen” not a reporter.
I spoke with DeGlopper about the complaint I received. I told him I was going to take it down not because DeGlopper’s facts were wrong but because the city official believed that journalistic rules of engagement (the subject being interviewed didn’t understand his comments were subject to publication as a news story) were not clearly noted during the meeting.
What really bothers me about the whole thing is this: The city official is going to tell one version of events to a private citizen and something different to a reporter?
It is the job of media to ask questions of people in power. The average East Ridge citizen doesn’t have the time or opportunity to ask questions of their officials. The media is their stand-in, their proxy, in asking for information, details, the “who, what, when, where and why” of what goes on in the city, especially with the citizens’ tax dollars.
Well, I suppose East Ridge News Online has made some strides in the last three years. It’s come from an online news source that nobody knew existed to a source that posts a story that a city official wants taken down because he doesn’t want the information seen by the public.
