Why Do I Do It?

Raul Midon, one of my favorite performers, repeats in one of his songs, ‘Why Do I Do It?’ The song leads you to believe that he’s conflicted about his profession as he looks for answers why he does the things he does. None of the things he does seem destructive or harmful but you can tell that the demands of his rising stardom as a musician is requiring some lifestyle adjustments that seem to be annoying him a bit.

Four years ago I started the Chester Spotlight, a pet project to bring positive news stories to Chester in a monthly newspaper. Success? Yes! But the prospect of having to produce a paper each month started to wear on me real fast, especially since I never planned for the project to last more than a year.

After another community paper came to Chester (a town I consider way too small for two small papers) I was ready to pack it up, but my supporters were not having it. They insisted that I keep publishing. I decided to take the month of March 2010 off and it was so liberating that I finally made the decision to stop the Chester Spotlight all together.

This time, folks came out of nowhere asking to buy the Chester Spotlight. I kept asking myself, ‘How do I get rid of this monster I created?’… and I mean monster in a positive sense. In the near future you’ll probably see some new folks running the Chester Spotlight and I’ll continue to play some small role if they insist. ‘Why Do I Do It?’

As fate would have it, I was reading Phil Heron’s blog and I saw that he was looking for community bloggers for the Delco Times web site. I jokingly replied to Phil, a guy I consider a mentor in the publishing business, and submitted a half hearted request to be the Chester City blogger. To my surprise, he said yes. So, I said yes back.

So, here I am again asking myself, Why Do I Do It?

The answer is simple. I see this as an opportunity for Chester to have an outlet to voice their news, views, concerns, aggravations, accomplishments and opinions to the paper so many feel ignores them and doesn’t understand them. They feel that not enough good stories come out of Chester and the paper always reports on crime and the struggling education system. Well, that’s what newspapers do!

If Phil thinks I’m the guy who can bring Chester’s true voice to the Delco Times by way of this blog, I accept that challenge. The greater task will be to get Chester people to accept the challenge of using this format to submit their news because community journalism is not an activity practiced by many folks in this city. It’s a cultural habit that more people around here have to adopt as they do in most other communities.

Why Do I Do It? Because I believe that Chester will step up to the challenge and present me with the material that will give the Delco Times web readers a real look at the city from the people who live, work and play here. They will stop complaining about bad coverage in the paper version and show the world how they want Chester to be represented on the web version.

Wishful thinking? Yes! But there’s never been a better opportunity to make it happen.

Thanks Daily Times for the opportunity.