BACK BAY — What follows is based upon my remarks to the City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 10, when that body kindly presented me with a resolution about the work our newspaper has done over the past decade to tell stories about our city.
Thank you all for reading this newspaper. I hope you got something out of it. I’ll miss this work, if not making deliveries in an overworked pickup truck.
Maybe we’ll talk again.
Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council, City Manager and staff, I am grateful for this.
This is very kind.
There are a lot of people I should thank, but I’m going to talk about Dolly Parton.
She is not from Virginia Beach. That is not her fault. She has a song called “Coat of Many Colors.” In it, a mom sews her child something out of a patchwork of rags.
It’s a good song. You should check it out.
The song is about making the best you can out of what you have. It’s also about not being ashamed to put that work over your shoulders and wear it with pride.
The song is about love.
So we made The Independent News with love. We made it with our hands. We never had money, and it came at a cost to my family, but we did it because local journalism made in and about Virginia Beach should exist.
I know there were a lot of times you could see the seams — imperfect stiches, plaid fabric kind of all jammed up weird next to polka dots — but we made it as well as we could for as long as we could do it.
I’m proud of our newspaper’s work, but we also need clear eyes as a city now that it’s done. It was imperfect and limited. Virginia Beach needs more than The Independent News ever provided. We need a lot better, too, than that one lonely fulltime reporter our local daily newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot, has around here.
Our stories should be told.
What we did at The Independent News was patchwork, but I hope folks in our communities can look past that and see the whole. Community is about celebrating how different we are while having some faith in common decency that binds us to purpose. I like to think we should see that whole, too.
At our best, a little newspaper made down the road in the southern city reminded us that challenges are also opportunities to make lives better. Even what seems humble can have use and meaning.
And, for what it’s worth, all the best songs are about love. Wanting it, losing it, finding it, and, when we’re lucky, sharing it with someone who loves us back. For that, I thank my family, and I thank Cortney.
Again, I thank all of you.
Our final print edition, which remains on many of our normal stands throughout this month, is a look back at a few snapshots of past stories, just some of the stuff we did with the advertisers’ money over the past several years.
So long, and thank you for reading.
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