My name is Mary Poletti, and I work for Quincy.
I came to The Quincy Herald-Whig in 2010, fresh from the master's program at the famed University of Missouri School of Journalism, ready to put what I'd learned to work in a news outlet that still mattered in its community. I'd spent two years learning how to mesh timeless theories of journalism with the very latest best practices of storytelling, the better to flesh out my childhood dream of becoming a reporter. I'd worked in the cutting-edge newsroom at the Columbia Missourian, where web-first reporting was a way of life and multimedia storytelling was de rigueur, where a writer was no longer just a writer and a newspaper was no longer just a newspaper.
I wanted to take that knowledge and experience to a true community newspaper – one that told the stories that mattered about people its readers knew, one whose reporters and editors were a part of civic life. What I didn't want was to take three steps back in the quality and methods of my storytelling just because I was moving to a smaller market.
Fortunately, at Quincy, I don't have to. Quincy's TV stations and newspapers are telling today's stories in tomorrow's methods – and they've got yesterday's rich history to back it up.
At The Quincy Herald-Whig, I report on government, schools and life in nine largely rural counties in our sprawling Northeast Missouri region. Technology is key to staying connected to my colleagues when stories carry me 60 miles from the newsroom, as they sometimes do. Our mobile journalist kit, a tool available to every reporter in our newsroom, has been nothing but valuable when I'm out on the road. I've filed stories from the laptop in the middle of fast food restaurants when the news can't wait for me to drive back; I've pulled out the camera when news breaks without a photographer around; and I've hooked up the cell phone for an Internet connection when the nearest wi-fi connection is two towns over.
Our focus on technology has spread in other ways to the way I gather news and tell stories. I'm constantly using Twitter to update local followers on breaking news (and, yes, occasionally banter with fellow members of the media). Blogs have become a way of life. Perhaps most excitingly for me, video has become an increasingly important part of our video toolkit. I love adding that visual component to the stories I write, in a way I never thought I would when I first became a reporter with the idea that I'd simply found a way to write for a living. The colleagues and editors who surround me have encouraged me to jump into video headfirst, and the results have given our readers some extra food for thought as they read the stories that matter to them.
That sums up two of my favorite things about Quincy: We're constantly urged to embrace innovation, and we're constantly supported as we do it. The Herald-Whig, along with our company's other print, TV and web properties, is always looking for the best way to tell the stories that matter, something that attracted me to it. For us on the print side, often that's through timeless good writing, but just as often it's through pictures, still or moving. Regardless of what we do, there's an atmosphere of mutual support and encouragement, based on the knowledge that we're all working together toward the same end: telling stories.
I know my colleagues well. I know many other people at Quincy well, too. The company is a family, built around the common mission of the news.
It's always been that way, something else that appealed to me. From its earliest days, Quincy has been a family-owned company, founded in 1926 to publish the new Herald-Whig newspaper, itself the product of mergers and transformations involving newspapers with a rich history nearly a century old by then.
When the city of Quincy marked the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War by reflecting on its role in that bloody conflict, including its ties to Abraham Lincoln, it was The Quincy Whig (founded in 1838) and The Quincy Herald (founded in 1835 as The Illinois Bounty Land Register) whose stories we pored over for the news of that day. Those two papers eventually became direct competitors in 1920 before merging six years later to become the paper where I now work. A colleague once casually mentioned that we'd gotten a paper out the door every day, under one name or another, for almost 175 years. Realizing he was right gave me the most wonderful jolt.
Through all those years, the family that helms Quincy now has been there. Our president and CEO, Ralph M. Oakley, is the great-grandson of the Ray M. Oakley who came aboard The Herald when it was purchased by a group of experienced newspapermen in 1891. They're a great family to work for, one that still honestly cares about employees in an age when the news business often isn't kind to news people.
And that family has been an integral part of its community, which in turn encourages the news outlets in our communities to get involved. The Herald-Whig honors its first responders and helps place newspapers in local schools' classrooms. WGEM-TV helps residents program their weather radios to be prepared for Mother Nature's worst. And the journalists and other professionals across our properties are involved in civic life in countless meaningful ways.
Quincy doesn't just do the news; it does innovation. And it's not just a company; it's a family. Those are what drew me here and kept me here. I hope they draw you in, too.
