Welcome to Grafton Common — Let’s talk news!

“I’m done with the news business,” I told my family. They nodded their heads. They’ve heard that before.

For a year, a solid year after my layoff from the Lowell Sun, I convinced myself it was true. I applied for jobs in communications and public relations. I took the first couple jobs of my 30-year career off my resume to hide my age. God help me, I even tried to run for public office.

There was still a reporter’s notebook in the bottom of my purse. It’s a great size, and who doesn’t need to write something down every now and then?

“It’s an eccentric quirk,” I thought to myself, as notebooks tumbled out of my car’s glove compartment as I went looking for a napkin.

I live-Tweeted Grafton Town Meeting in the spring, justifying it because “I don’t know what normal people even do with their hands at a public meeting.” I cocked my head to the side, like my beagle, when I heard the town’s fire alarm. One of the stronger scenes in my novel involves the heroine reading a news article about herself.

It was Don Clark, former editor of The Grafton News, who spelled it out for me at a campaign standout near Lake Ripple. I hadn’t seen him in years. We were competitors back when I covered Grafton for the now-defunct Grafton Times/Daily Grafton/Grafton Daily Voice, but we always respected each other. And he made it clear: he would be voting for Kandy LaVallee for town clerk.

I tried to make my case, but Don was having none of it. “You’ll be bored,” he said. “I’ve watched you go and this is not the job for you.”

I was a little bit insulted. I had campaign signs! Even if, as I scrabbled for a campaign button in my car, I only found more reporter’s notebooks.

The news business has now tried to make me leave three times. But I’m a journalist. If you say “no,” I wonder what you’re hiding. If you avoid me, I’ll find out where you are. If you take away my newspaper… well, I’ll make my own darn media outlet.

Welcome to Grafton Common. It’s a place where everyone in Grafton can meet in the middle. It’s a place where, I hope, we can all discuss the news, actual news — not hearsay, not gossip, not conspiracy theories. Politely. Like adults. If you’ve been on a site I’ve run before, you know I have a low tolerance for anything that resembles the Boston Herald comments section. Please be respectful.

In return, I will trudge to town board meetings. I’ll go out to meet candidates. I’ll interview interesting people. I’ll shoot photos and videos. I’ll take your submissions and calendar items and press releases. I really DO want to see that giant fish you caught, your daughter’s Girl Scout Gold Award project, the balloon that landed in your backyard. I want to hear about your new business. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you why your neighborhood is full of smoke and why so many firefighters are running around.

Why am I doing this now? 

Richard Price, who I initially hired as my Grafton reporter and kept on reporting for his now-defunct Grafton Villager, has stepped down as Grafton News editor. There isn’t a whole lot of Grafton in the Grafton News now, since GateHouse Media has passed the job to the (probably already overworked) editor of the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle.

If I don’t do this, who will?

Local newspapers have been steadily bought up by national news chains over the course of my career. Several of the publications in my past no longer exist. The rest are just shadows of their former selves. Isn’t it odd that subscription rates fall when news staffs are slashed, editing is outsourced to an out-of-state hub, photographers are replaced with cell phone shots, and news sections become cookie-cutter?

I believe a town thrives when people know and care about what is going on. It’s what made me run for town clerk (I still hate the town’s website and social media use). It’s why, when I have a question, I still reach out to local officials and demand answers.

Speaking of which…

An interesting thing happened the day I started at the Lowell Sun back in 2013. Town Administrator Tim McInerney told me he put an offer on a house in my neighborhood — specifically, the house right next door to mine. He’s probably as irritated with us calling in our beagle at night as we are with his dog barking, but we are friendly neighbors — not enough for cookouts or beers, probably not enough for me to bang on the door at midnight demanding a comment, and certainly not enough for it to affect my reporting. I’ll throw this out there.

In the meantime, take a wander around Grafton Common. Help me fill it up with events for the calendar and newsy items by emailing jennifer@graftoncommon.com. The site, for now, is entirely free — I’m not planning on adding a subscription aspect, or advertising, until the site completely meets my standards. Meanwhile, If you see a woman wandering around town with a camera and messy hair, yell out “Hi, Jenn!”

And keep coming back. Grafton Common is open at all hours — if news happens more than once a week, why not read it as it happens?