Rereading the last two issues of the Concord Bridge, and reflecting on the winding paths that got us to publication, never a straight line, it occurs to me that we haven’t thanked David Ropeik enough for having lit the spark that got us all to think seriously about the mission and business of offering real local news coverage to Concord residents.
While a number of us had been talking about what to do to remedy the rapid decline in local coverage, it was David who initiated serious discussion and planning in the fall of 2020 and gathered a number of us together to map out next steps in creating an online local news source.
David worked hard at his vision, and reached out to many in the journalism community to firm up a business plan. But, as our discussions proceeded, I and a few others became more drawn to a news model that included a physical paper, like our neighbor Carlisle enjoys with its Mosquito, celebrating its 50th birthday this past summer. Cost was a serious issue, but I believed, and Concord agreed, that the Town would support a real paper, that landed free of charge in each of our mailboxes.
But the point of this letter is publicly to thank David for his persistence in calling attention to the need for local news and for his generosity in sharing his research as we moved in another direction to publication.
Virginia (Dinny) McIntyre
