In which the journalism gods smile upon Grafton Common, and all hell breaks loose

I used to joke about the journalism gods. If they smiled upon a reporter, I decreed, when that reporter switched beats or newspapers, big news would immediately follow. And it happens, with stories of murder, government corruption and, in the case of a favorite former college student writing for a Caribbean newspaper, Hurricane Maria.

Grafton, I’m sorry. I seem to have set off 2020.

I’m not even talking about international or national news — although a pandemic is a little too on brand, given my past as a health reporter and my first Grafton site coincided with H1N1 shutting down Grafton High School. The first year of Grafton Common contained more newsworthy events than an alleged sleepy Central Massachusetts should see:

• The town had a “mutual separation” with Town Administrator Tim McInerney, leaving Grafton leaderless amidst the COVID-19 pandemic;
• COVID-19 brought us Zoom meetings, delayed the spring town election, created the need for an outdoor Town Meeting and graduation, shut down businesses, turned getting takeout into a civic duty, and added a sense of danger to the simple act of running to Stop & Shop for toilet paper;
• Did I mention the schools, remote learning, the hybrid model, watching the superintendent of schools patiently explain that they have to make everything up as they go along?
• There was that time when two incumbent selectmen were voted out and, also, 202 ballots were discovered a week later;
• Black Lives Matter protests are now a regular thing in Grafton and, not at all coincidentally, Grafton High School’s mascot is no longer an Indian;
• Oh yeah, we had an override;
• I’ve officially fallen prey to the journalism cliche of using “amidst” too often, given the number of times I need to cite COVID-19 for whatever the heck might have gone wrong.

This isn’t normal. None of this is normal.

All of this serves to bury the lede in this column: Today, October 15, 2020, marks the very first birthday of Grafton Common, the website I swore I would never create but yet, I did anyway.

How well did the experiment work?

After a year, Grafton Common is viewed by anywhere from 800 to 6,000 readers a day, usually reflecting how many stories I’ve produced, what happens to be in the news, and if it happens to involve food. The readership is loyal — 65 percent are return visitors, most popping onto the site from Grafton Common’s Facebook page, and 75 percent are reading on their phones.

Some of the top stories:

What you didn’t see on Grafton Common this year: advertising. Funny story. My business plan called for starting some sort of advertising in… March. Just in time for the shutdown! But what the heck, it’s a pandemic. I settled down in my upstairs office and Zoomed in on public meetings, my husband took over the downstairs office and Zoomed in to work meetings and our daughter Zoomed to college from her bedroom. Plans change.

Many many thanks for reader support via my Ko-fi page. It’s keeping the website running, my coffee cup filled (sometimes with peanut butter M&Ms), and pays my Photoshop subscription. It also gives a thrice laid off journalist a bit of an ego boost before she puts on a mask and traipses off to her retail job.

Shall we give it another year and see what happens next?