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It is traditional for newspaper editors to begin their Thanksgiving columns with gauzy platitudes about the meaning of the holiday. And no doubt I’ll deliver a couple of those before you get to the end of this.
But first, I need to say this: Go Bills! Stomp the Cowboys!
Remarkably, Buffalo has never played on Thanksgiving Day against Dallas, which has owned the late-afternoon holiday slot since 1966. And we haven’t seen western New Yorkers’ favorite team play at all on the fourth Thursday of November since Thanksgiving 1994, the season that ended Buffalo’s four-consecutive-Super-Bowl-appearances streak.
So my advice to everyone hosting Thanksgiving dinner in greater Rochester (this means you, oldest sister): Be aware at least some of the people you’ll be serving will have their smartphone alarms set for 4:30 p.m., when the game begins. Smart scheduling of dinner and dessert can help avoid a family incident.
Giving thanks for dedicated D&C reporters
Seriously, I have much to be grateful for as the autumn-winter holiday season picks up steam. In my first year as editor of the D&C, I’ve come to meet and appreciate tremendously dedicated journalists who are doing some of the best work of their careers at a time when local news is in peril.
The economics of local news might have turned for the worse since the rise of the internet and social media, but the work of our breaking-news team, our investigative team, our features writers, our sportswriters, our photographers, our editors and our online producers has been exemplary through a continued period of transition.
I couldn’t ask for anything more. Our journalists’ work has impact, it brings clarity to complex situations and it is drawing substantial online readership and digital subscriptions that are crucial for our future success as a business.
I think of Bills writer Sal Maiorana, who will be at AT&T Stadium for the Thanksgiving game in Arlington, Texas. He’ll be far from family on the most-family oriented holiday — because he has a job to do and he does it well.
Sal’s Twitter account on game day crackles with energy, insight and real-time emotion. He sees the Bills’ performance with a clear eye, win or lose. And it’s his post-game analysis we’ll all be looking for around the time the tryptophan is kicking in mid-evening Thursday.
Over the course of the season, others contribute to the depth and breadth of our Buffalo coverage.
Leo Roth is a storyteller extraordinaire, one who never fails to turn in a delightful turn of phrase when least expected.
And photographer Jamie Germano’s superpower is to catch the key moment from the best angle, and often the facial expressions in response to those key moments.
I would be remiss not to mention D&C digital producer Ryan Miller (no, not the hockey goalie), who routinely crafts timely and insightful short pieces about everything Bills, both during games and during the week. And orchestrating all of this is sports editor Steve Bradley, who’s been known to write a Buffalo article himself from time to time.
How you can support local news reporting in a challenging era
Not every reader loves the Buffalo Bills, or football, or even professional or high school sports, of course.
The D&C employs more than three dozen other journalists who write about local politics, who deliver high-powered investigative work, who tell a curious audience about food and drink in greater Rochester, who venture out into snowy weather to write about storms and who explore topics relevant to you like local real estate and the recent Albion school threats.
In 2019, we’ve created an eight-reporter New York State Team led by Joseph Spector, who guides his team in delivering consumer watchdog news, health news, jobs and the economy news and stories of interest about topics like Spectrum cable bills, our state tax rebate checks and when the Thruway might raise its tolls again.
The print newspaper might be smaller than it was a decade or two ago, as advertisers nationwide migrate online because working-age readers have migrated online. But I can assure you the quality of work this team creates every week is unmatched.
Indeed, I had to look up a D&C article on Newspapers.com from June 1980 and was surprised to realize that our body of work in 2019 — created by a much-smaller newsroom — is often more in-depth and insightful than much of what I saw in that 39-year-old D&C.
The additional pages we published back then were filled with lots and lots (and lots and lots) of news wire stories from around the world and around the nation and around the state.
In no way am I minimizing the existential threat posed to local news nationwide as print wanes and lots of people today seem allergic for paying for news delivered online. But seeing that old paper reminded me of this wise lyric from the Macklemore and Kesha song, “Good Old Days:”
So I am exceedingly grateful for the quality of work our journalists deliver and their commitment to keeping the flame of local journalism alive. Thank you, D&C team. Thank you.
And thank you.
How to help your friends subscribe to the D&C at a special holiday rate
All that said, we will be offering this Thanksgiving season and into early December. (This story will be updated with the link by Thursday.)
This will be an introductory rate, and for new subscribers only. We offer this because it’s important we get online subscribers in the door, help them see at a special rate that our work is worth paying full freight for month in and month out. (These introductory rates DO help people allergic to paying for anything online to get over that particular allergy.)
There is a good chance if you’re reading this, you’ve been a loyal D&C reader for many years (in some cases for longer than I’ve been alive). What I’m asking you to do: Please share news on Thanksgiving weekend of our special digital subscription rate with a daughter or a nephew or a neighbor or a friend.
Let them know their support of local news, on top of yours and that of so many others, can help the D&C get past the difficult economics of the 2000s and work toward growing our daily news report. The 2020s are the decade when I believe local news will stabilize and strengthen; encouraging others to invest in it like you have is a truly productive act. Not only for you, but for greater Rochester and for the health of our democracy.
More: How to subscribe
One last thought, one that is gauzy but I hope not a platitude: The D&C has sought to serve local readers for 186 years. We do care. And we are endlessly thankful for your support.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving. And please cheer on the Bills.
I pledge to you this: The D&C team will do its best to serve greater Rochester and each of our readers every single day.
Thanks for reading.
Michael Kilian is executive editor of the Democrat and Chronicle. Reach him at mkilian@gannett.com.
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