This Saturday will mark yet another milestone in the adventure known as the existence of the mighty Falls Church News-Press. It will mark 35 years to the day since that eventful March 28, 1991 evening, when the first ever edition of your newspaper of record came chugging down the rollers of a community printing press in Maryland. The one factor we did not take into account in the rush up to that day was how to get 7,000 copies of that first edition delivered to where a family of distributors were waiting to begin putting them out into the community. We were able to bribe someone hanging out at the printer to deliver other papers to take ours and drop them in Falls Church.
It took months to put together the first ever edition. The next day, after some hours of deep sleep, we (our editor and his sidekick at the time) decided to do the next one for the very next week, and so the unbroken sequence of weekly editions began to this day. A last-minute call out to community leaders for a party in our office that same night was also made. A couple dozen folks showed up for the pizza and conversation. The office then was on the second floor of the same building we now occupy on N. Virginia Ave. In the middle of a night of relentless striving to meet our deadline, as it began to turn light outside, it became evident that the trees outside our window were blossoming, a sure cosmic sign that our work had significance.
We consider the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce’s Business of the Year (small business category) received last week as emblematic not only for ourselves, but for the beleaguered newspaper industry in general, everywhere. This is a sign, like those blossoms. Take up the toil, take on the task, do what humanity requires to share community, share aspirations and news through a tactile social medium like a printed newspaper!
There are huge problems to solve at every level of our society. We need to be talking to one another, sharing stories and ideas, not contingent on agreement, but with some core values intact, such as the value of a free press, of democracy, of facts, science and the rule of law. Let the debates go on under those conditions. Society, we believe, will advance under such conditions, not always in a single line, but more generally, to the betterment of us all.
We applaud the service of Falls Church’s City Manager Wyatt Shields, having led this community on its transition from little city to Little City, the emphasis on the first word before, and the second word now. This year’s budget will be a challenge, but nothing like what Falls Church’s neighbors in Arlington and Fairfax are facing.