Missing Link

As I’ve written in the past, I look longingly at the era of the free daily newspaper. It was an era that represented much of my traditional newspaper career, and it’s one that has been more or less forgotten about by mainstream journalism.

But I had the chance to work at three of them, one of which was among the largest of its kind in the country, the Washington Post Express. I loved that paper, though I admit that when I think back to my time in newspapers, I think about Link above everything else.

Link, a publication of the Virginian-Pilot that began its life 20 years ago today, started with a provocative idea: What if you could take a 30-column-inch story and condense it into a 3-column-inch story? You could present the information in a new way, leaning on alternative story forms; you could make room for more visuals. And you could inform someone who might not have time for a long-form newspaper in a matter of minutes.

I think fondly of this paper for a number of reasons. To keep in the spirit of the alt-story-form in which it worked:

1. The newspaper. The format of the newspaper was always a bit like a puzzle to me. We essentially were building a magazine from scratch five days a week, sometimes producing ambitious pages without even knowing what would be on the front page that day.
2. The format. Though I was a designer, this was the first real experience I got with editing copy, learning the process of taking a story down to the studs and still making it feel dynamic and informative. It taught me a lot about brevity and telling a story through its elements, not just through prose.
3. The newsroom. It was a strange newsroom by the time it ended; four designers, six copy editors, a web guy, a single reporter, and the editor-in-chief. In most newsrooms, this order would be flipped entirely. But this made room for a ton of ideas, as we took the best of the Pilot and presented it to people who would never pick up a copy of the Pilot otherwise. (What was also great was that some folks in the main Pilot newsroom actually made time for us nerds.)
4. The community. I had never lived in a community quite like Norfolk, which was small enough to be accessible but large enough that there was always something going on. In terms of real life, it was probably the most social I’ve ever felt living somewhere. I’m actually still in touch with some of the folks I met during this era, both in the newsroom and outside of it.
5. The inspiration. After this paper shut down, it inspired me to start a blogging career that was driven by this format. I’ve more or less have been doing it ever since, though I write a lot more than I did in 2006.

While this little newspaper had lots of little strengths, there were some weaknesses with the format that perhaps are more obvious from a healthy distance. Most free daily newspapers were intended for commuter-friendly towns, generally to be read on the train or bus. Hampton Roads, alas, is infamously a car-centric community with a number of bridge-tunnels connecting its various parts. Despite being a factor in its creation, the region only got its first light rail system three years after Link ended, and that system has yet to get out of Norfolk to any of the numerous other cities in the region.

The other factor, and not an uncommon one with papers of its type: Its internet presence was more or less anemic. (Yes, given the name, somewhat ironic.) Unlike so many newspapers of its era, it didn’t have much of a website, in part out of concern that it would directly compete with the main publication, and in part because the paper effectively was a reformatting of long-form newspaper content in an inventive way.

It ended in the same sad way so many other things ended: As news of the 2008 recession was breaking, we found out layoffs were happening at the Pilot, and it was strongly hinted that Link would be on the chopping block. But it did not shut down right away, but with a two-month delay, with the paper ending just before Christmas, 2008. Unlike Lehman Brothers, we had a proper chance to say a very long goodbye to this job we all loved. (A sign that there might have been some regrets about this shift: About six months after the paper shut down, when I was merely visiting Norfolk, I ran into the business executive in charge of the Pilot’s publishing businesses at a coffee shop, and, seemingly embarrassed to be running into a guy he laid off not that long ago, he sheepishly suggested that he would try to bring this paper back. I’m probably safe to assume it’s not happening at this point.)

Two decades later, I still find myself looking back at this era, with this job that paid more in the form of freedom than it did money, and thinking I had it all figured out. At least some of the glass is rose-tinted, I will admit. But ultimately, Link set me up for a different kind of success after the 27-month experience of a great job ended. I ended up getting my gig at Express and moving to D.C., where I immediately met my future wife, and found myself becoming a blogger of modest note. I would sometimes get yelled at for showing up to the paper too early to work, not because I was trying to score overtime, but because I was excited by the work. I eventually put that energy into the digital realm instead.

At this point, I’m pretty much a fully digital creature. But it’s hard to get the ink stains off my fingers all these years later, and while I had the bug before I worked at Link, it was where it really stuck for me. I still integrate alt-story-form into my various projects, and if I ever find a pocket of time to build it, I still own the domain to the former Link website, as well as a newspaper box that currently sits in my living room.

Over the past few years, an art collective driven by fans of Express has been periodically publishing new versions of the newspaper, independently of The Washington Post. I’m probably not doing any of that. While I don’t have a printing press at my disposal, I do have a bunch of old issues, some PDFs, and a brain full of memories. Oh, and the box. And the domain.

Maybe that’s enough.