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Editors say budget not bias is biggest threat

Local editors
Dick Hammerstrom of The Free Lance-Star, Jeff Say of The Culpeper Star-Exponent and Jeff Poole of the Orange County Review, face readers. (Photo by Dan McFarland)

Top editors from the three newspapers who most often cover Lake of the Woods participated in a panel discussion at the club’s Feb. 16 meeting, telling an audience of about 60 members and visitors that political bias is not a factor in their editorial decisions but that the economic condition of the industry often is.

Dick Hammerstrom, local news editor of The Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg; Jeff Say, community editor of The Star-Exponent in Culpeper; and Jeff Poole, managing editor of the Orange County Review, participated in an informative discussion of the issues facing their industry and answered questions from the audience.

The three editors said the flagging profitability of newspapers has greatly reduced the size of news staffs and made the news-gathering process more difficult than ever. Mr. Say and Mr. Poole, whose papers are both owned by Richmond-based Media General Corp., said the content of their news columns are edited at a central copy desk in Lynchburg in order to keep costs low. The result of this, they said, is news coverage that is less locally oriented and less likely to reflect the needs of local readers.

Each of the editors said that changes to the media landscape brought on by the Internet and other factors have resulted in newsroom budgets being slashed and editors being asked to do more with less.

Not waiting for a member of the audience to bring it up, Mr. Hammerstrom addressed an error that appeared recently in the Free Lance-Star regarding the estimated cost of improvements to the LOW Clubhouse bar. Despite journalists’ best efforts to keep such errors from occurring, he said, “We are human, and we do make mistakes.”

Each of the editors encouraged residents of Lake of the Woods to keep them informed of newsworthy events in the community.

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Steering committee meeting

The February Steering Committee meeting will be at Bill and Norma Lanier’s home at 317 Edgehill Drive.


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February meeting

A panel of local journalists will discuss how decisions regarding the news are made, especially as regards state and local politics. Dick Hammerstrom, local news editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg; Jeff Say, community editor of The Star Exponent in Culpeper; and Jeff Poole, managing editor of the Orange County Review in Orange will participate.

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Club events Meetings

Panel of journalists to explain how we get our news

A panel of distinguished editors from three of the primary sources of local news in Lake of the Woods will participate in a roundtable discussion about community media at the Feb. 16 meeting of the Lake of the Woods Democratic Club.

Dick Hammerstrom, local news editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg; Jeff Say, community editor of The Star Exponent in Culpeper; and Jeff Poole, managing editor of the Orange County Review in Orange will talk about how they make the decisions that result in what we know about state and local issues, especially politics.

The meeting will be held at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in the Lower Level of the LOW Clubhouse. As always, guests are welcome.

The newspapers represented by the panelists all circulate in Lake of the Woods and cover issues affecting this community. The panelists will respond to questions from the audience after their presentations.

Dick Hammerstrom is responsible for coordinating political coverage for The Free Lance-Star, including local, state and national elections and the Virignia General Assembly.

He also is involved in open-government activities and serves as the chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the Virginia Press Association and vice president of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

Before coming to Fredericksburg in 1997, Mr. Hammerstrom worked at newspapers in Martinsville and Roanoke in Virginia and Charlotte, N.C.

Jeff Say has worked in the newspaper industry for 12 years, beginning as a small-town sports editor in Clarion, Pa. He moved to Culpeper about seven years ago, working first as a sports reporter at the Culpeper Star-Exponent. Say was promoted to sports editor in 2006 and became community editor in 2007 and now leads a newsroom of six journalists.

Mr. Say lives in Culpeper with his wife, Sarah, and their 20-month-old daughter, Mady.

In addition to being managing editor of the Orange County Review, Jeff Poole is the group managing editor for community newspapers in Orange, Greene and Madison counties.

He has been working on newspapers since his grandfather took him on a photo shoot when he was five years old. His grandfather, uncles, mother and father all owned, operated, printed, wrote for or otherwise worked for newspapers, so his career path was largely predetermined by the time he earned his bachelor of arts degree in English from Mary Washington College.

He has been the editor of the Review, his hometown newspaper, for nearly 16 years and accumulated more than 40 Virginia Press Association awards in writing, photography and design.

The Free Lance-Star is published seven days a week by the Free Lance-Star Publishing Co., a privately held company. Its paid circulation is about 41,675. The Star-Exponent and the Orange Review are both owned by Media General, a public company operating primarily in the southeastern United States, based in Richmond. The Star-Exponent is published seven days and week and has a paid circulation of about 5,738. The Orange Review is published weekly on Thursdays and has a paid circulation of about 4,733.

More information on the newspapers the editors represent is available by visiting these Web sites:

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Dr. Grimesey gave informative report on local schools

Despite some of the most severe funding constraints in its history, Orange County Public Schools is determined to provide children with the kind of education they deserve.

That was the message from Dr. Robert P. Grimesey Jr., school superintendent, when he addressed members of the Lake of the Woods Democratic Club at the LOW Clubhouse on Jan. 19.

His troubling assessment of the division’s economic strife was tempered with hope that Orange County citizens might at last be willing to provide the resources necessary for local schools to succeed.

Among the startling revelations from Dr. Grimesey are these:

  • Since the 2007-08 fiscal year, the local school budget has been cut by $4.7 million, resulting in the loss of 100 employees, including 30 teachers.
  • Orange County teachers have not had a cost-of-living adjustment or a step increase for four years. The practical effect of this is that they have suffered a 7.8 percent cut in pay.
  • One out of every three teachers in Orange County has just four years of experience or less.
  • Not a single teacher in Orange County Schools has a computer less than five years old.

Since he became superintendent in 2009, much of his energy and attention necessarily has been invested in “what we can do to keep the school system from falling into decline,” Dr. Grimesey said.

Whereas the county’s Board of Supervisors has been reluctant in the past even to consider increasing taxes to meet the needs of local schools, he said, support from citizens and some members of the board have given him reason to believe that hard-line attitude is changing.

Dr. Grimesey also provided a detailed explaination of how the decision was made to close down Locust Grove Middle School on Route 20 and move the students to the new school on Flat Run Road. He said the county will save $222,000 in operating costs each year that the school is closed. Keeping the school closed for more than the next year or two will not be an option because of increased enrollment, he said. By that time, it is expected that enough will be saved to finance the re-opening costs.

A complete videocast of Dr. Grimesey’s remarks will be presented on Comcast Channel 18 in the near future. Consult Lake Currents for dates and times.