Captain's Log - the Long Game

I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the past seven years trying to figure out how to make a local newspaper work. Refusing to believe it cannot be done, we press on, continually and humbly relying on the old on-the-job training method, learning in the oldest classroom there is — learning as we go because we have to make it work.

We are building this plane as we learn to fly it.

This past month has been lesson after excruciating lesson, and when I use the word “humbly,” I do so with great weight.

While talking with The Intern the other day, trying to solve yet another self-inflicted situation and reaching a level of intense discouragement, I received a profound life lesson for which I am deeply grateful.

Riggin is our intern, and we’ve had the pleasure of his company, his help, his sense of humor, and the opportunity to cheer for his many life successes over the past two years. We are better for having known him. We’ve also tried to give him a real job title several times, but the joy on his face when he introduces himself at meetings and events as “The Intern” is simply one of life’s great pleasures.

We were trying to solve a computer problem, and I was apologizing for slowing his progress on a task because of my lack of technical ability and generally causing the situation we were trying to fix.

He said to me, “Listen, you’re running a successful newspaper conglomerate and have a lot going on.”

To which I snorted coffee out my nose and said, “This is hardly a success.”

That young man, in all the naïveté of youth and optimism, just shrugged and said, “It’s the long game, Rachel.”

Indeed. Some days longer than others.

So while we enjoy these last couple of weeks with The Intern as he readies to leave the nest and head off to college, we’ll always be right here, hoping one day he’ll come back to us as our corporate lawyer, and of course we’ll be…

…Keeping you Posted.

Rachel