Bruce Mitchell's The Athens NEWS, a powerhouse legacy of local Ohio journalism

Yahoo

5 days ago

Bruce Mitchell, right, oversees a staff meeting in The Athens News offices. (Photo credit: ©1978 Greg Smith/imediaSmith.com. Photo only for use with original article.)
The first time I met Bruce Mitchell, in December 2008, while I waited for our appointment, I noticed a sign hanging in the second-floor front office of The Athens NEWS at 14 N. Court Street in Athens, Ohio.
'A newspaper's duty is to print the news and raise hell,' it said.
When Bruce walked in to greet me, I gestured toward the sign.
'I love reporting the news,' I grinned. 'And I love raising hell.'
He beamed back with his wide, open smile and laughed his approval.
After our conversation that day, I knew kismet had found us — a shared bulldog energy for public accountability against corruption combusting in our professional cores.
Hard-nosed and never afraid of confrontation, but not militant or hateful, this energy is fueled not by fear, contempt, vengeance, or resentment, but an absolute love and commitment to community, humanity, truth, justice, and public service.
Having for years read and admired the work of longtime Editor Terry Smith, Jim Phillips, and Nick Claussen, I knew quickly after my interviews with Terry and Bruce that The Athens NEWS would mean something in my life.
Perhaps, though, I didn't fully recognize how deep and profound its meaning until just last weekend, when many of us were reunited in Athens to celebrate Bruce's life and legacy following his passing on April 29 at the age of 71.
As I watched a slideshow last Saturday of Bruce living this joyful, fiercely unique, caring, heart-forward, service-oriented, wildly colorful life, I could not help but be struck by the force and magnitude of all that he and Terry had built. Of course, many others helped, from Bruce's wonderful wife Susan and his business partner Guy Philips, to the countless reporters, staff and sales reps, graphics people and photographers who contributed so much along the way.
I joined the NEWS at the very start of 2009, after Terry hired me as a new staff reporter over the holidays.
I had been a student reporter for the campus bureau of the paper during my senior year at Ohio University. I used those first crucial professional clips to obtain an internship in Washington D.C., which turned into a job at the National Journal's The Hotline. That led to a job for the New York Observer's Politicker covering the 2008 campaign cycle in then-battleground Ohio. After the election was over, they laid us all off.
I needed a new reporting job, and wanted to gain a wider variety of coverage experience. Terry was looking for a reporter with political coverage chops. Bruce had already been printing the news and raising hell for more than three decades as publisher of The Athens NEWS, which he founded in 1977, fresh after graduating from Ohio University and raising plenty of hell as a campus leader and activist.
While I was an undergrad, I read every twice-weekly edition of The Athens NEWS.
I loved — and still love — the tactile quality of flipping through a physical newspaper: the feel, the sound, the smell, the vibe. The Athens NEWS was free, ubiquitous around the campus and city, and useful. With no smartphones back then, every Monday and Thursday I would sit down to lunch at one of the dining halls and read the whole thing.
From the NEWS, I knew every event at every venue every weekend throughout the city and county. I knew all the bands, all the players, all the local personalities, the best bars and food spots, the best deals, all the clubs and activities, all the festivals, all the opportunities.
I knew everything Ohio University was up to, and anything nefarious the administration might be trying to pull. I knew everything the city and county was up to as well, and anything untoward any local officials might be trying to pull. I knew the crime, I knew the scandals.
When I joined the full-time team, it was a blessing: With Bruce's passionate, tireless crusade against public corruption and injustice of any kind, I knew I had the freedom to be the best bulldog reporter I could be.
With Jim Phillips' extraordinary, polished, and excellent example, I could study a master reporter at work. And with Terry Smith's steady-handed, level-headed, practical, insightful, inquisitive mentorship and guidance, I learned everything I ever needed to know about how to run a newsroom like a true pro.
I expected to be at The Athens NEWS for two years. I ended up staying for nine.
We held powerful local politicians accountable to the people, and Ohio University accountable to its students and the larger community. We exposed schemes, scams, and abuse.
We did all the everyday reporting that the community needed. We featured everybody making a positive impact, told our readers the heartbreaking truth about poverty and all its attendant ills in Appalachia, exposed predatory landlords and corrupt politicians, and produced every kind of special issue, student and visitor guide imaginable. I got to write everything from restaurant reviews and Goo Goo Dolls interviews, to deeply reported issue coverage of addiction in Southeast Ohio.
While Terry ran the show in the newsroom — ever-balancing Bruce's intensity and more feverish ideas with Terry's own steady and serious news judgment — behind the operation as a whole stood Bruce, a pied-piper with a wild tie and funny hat, deepening community connections, leading our march in the Halloween parade, handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving and trees at Christmas, taking us to Cincinnati for Reds games, throwing birthday pizza parties, insisting relentlessly on fun.
He was one-of-a-kind, never meant for mass production, and others have written lovely tributes outlining the many memorable stories about Bruce and the wonderful things he accomplished, including former reporter Miles Layton and longtime Athens NEWS columnist Dennis E. Powell.
In my time there, I got all the invaluable reporting experience I craved, covering local government, crime and the courts, education, health care, energy and the environment, natural disasters, public corruption, protests and riots.
After working first in D.C. and then Columbus, I finally saw and learned how policy impacts Ohioans' lives at the ground level. I'd been in their homes. I'd heard their stories. I'd witnessed their tears.
What happens at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus is not theoretical to me; I know the repercussions in my heart — I know the faces of the people being harmed.
And perhaps therein lies the source of my largest debt of gratitude to Bruce, Terry, Jim, and the whole rest of the entire Athens NEWS team over the years.
Everything I learned there became a part of me. I carry it all within me now, at the Ohio Capital Journal, with my own team.
So last Saturday, as I sat there in my beloved Athens, reunited for this celebration of life, a wave of gratitude, appreciation, and admiration crashed over me.
What a helluva great and noble thing Bruce had done, creating The Athens NEWS and building it into the beautiful community newspaper that it was.
Over the decades, an upstart alternative newsweekly became, by the time Bruce retired in 2015 — and for five years after through Terry and Conor Morris — what ought to always be remembered as an absolute powerhouse of local Ohio journalism.
Fair, fearless, free, fact-based reporting for the people.
Those are actually the mission taglines for the Ohio Capital Journal, but they may as well have been the taglines for The Athens NEWS. I realize now that this whole ethos was inspired and ingrained in me during my time there. And by some wild grace I have the good fortune to continue on with it with States Newsroom, dedicated only to doing the best journalism possible.
Before I left Bruce's celebration of life last Saturday, having reflected on all of this, I made sure to tell Susan how grateful I was for the role that she and Bruce and The Athens NEWS played in my life, and how fortunate I feel to be able to try to continue some of that legacy today with the work of the Ohio Capital Journal.
Graceful and gracious as ever, Susan gave me a hug and told me that Bruce had followed our work at the Capital Journal and he was proud. That made my eyes well up. I hadn't seen Bruce in the years after I moved to Columbus and they moved to Key West, but I knew that if he ever read the Capital Journal then he would've recognized various reflections of the kind of work we did at the NEWS. That made me smile.
Bruce was a man who cared passionately about others and cared passionately about justice and community. He lived with joy, loved deeply, fought corruption relentlessly, and poured himself into his community with no reservations. He was a wild man, with a great big honest heart, and to me, that counts for everything. Bravo, my friend.
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