Welcome to TTN reborn

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May 23, 2011

Welcome to our new site.

We’re thrilled to make some changes in our old web newspaper.

We hope The Tallahassee News will be interesting enough for you to bookmark. Our designer Gene Hilsheimer of Panama City has created a beautiful platform.

Local stories will be our focus. We will have a Facebook page, Twitter, and some national and state news. But most importantly, we hope to bring you new local information and opinion.

Why a new voice? The state monument in front of the Tallahassee Democrat proclaims the city has always had a vigorous press. We’d like to add to the vigor. More voices are good for democracy.

Rochel and I moved up to this attractive city in 1972 mesmerized by its azaleas and one of the Springtime parades. After five years at The Tallahassee Democrat, I resigned one summer to do something else, anything, really.

It was about roots and about newspapers. It’s about the voice of the free press.

Please pardon this digression, but I must explain myself. All of what follows is strictly confidential, between you and me.

As a teenager I delivered The Miami News from my bicycle to earn a few dollars a week. I enjoyed reading the editorials by Bill Baggs and columns by humorist John Keasler. On the radio, I was a fan of Larry King who broadcast from a houseboat across from a luxury Miami Beach hotel. These were the days of Surfside Six.

In addition, our family had “roots” in the press. I heard the story from my mom of how my great uncles grew up in Baltimore next door to reporter and iconoclast H.L. Mencken of The Baltimore Sun. He advised my great uncle Norton, a wannabee poet, and two other of my uncles wrote about Mencken in The Baltimore Sun.

I still treasure my small collection of his immortal prose.

Later, at The Miami Beach Sun, I listened to intrepid crime reporters Edna Buchanan and Hank Messick spin their tall tales. Buchanan later won the Pulitzer Prize for writing what Miami was all about - grisly and sensational crime.

At The Palm Beach Post I covered small but universal metaphor of Belle Glade - on the muckland apron of Lake Okeechobee. I had the opportunity to write about migrant workers in “the winter vegetable capital of the world.” I have put some of my photos at http://www.flwildflowers.com/BelleGlade.

As a state desk editor at The Miami Herald, I learned how to design and edit a newspaper.

In 1977 or 78, it became time to leave The Democrat, at that time under the editorship of Malcolm Johnson. I wanted a challenge.

Rochel and I eventually enrolled at the University of Missouri, where we both earned more academic credentials and where our family grew.

I accepted a position teaching journalism at Florida A&M University, which has, of course, no connection with the policies or coverage of this newspaper. This effort is in keeping with a tradition started by Roosevelt Wilson, who ran The Capital Outlook while professing journalism at FAMU. A free press is a First Amendment right.

As many of you know, the roots of a free expression go back centuries. The writer John Milton and philosopher John Stuart Mill spoke to the value of listening to differing beliefs and ideas. Out of contesting thoughts emerges a picture of truth. In truth, our democracy depends upon voices from all sectors of society.

Back after WWII, when newspapers seemed to revel in scandal and untoward allegation, the privately endowed Hutchins Commission suggested that the media can be both free and responsible.

Media should present “a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning; a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism; the projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society; the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society and full access to the day’s intelligence.”

That’s still a goal almost everywhere for the free press.

If we happen to run across an unusual story, we want to write about it. If you have an idea, let us know. We can’t offer more material than the major local media, but we can offer a different outlook, some fresh ideas.

To make some suggestions, drop us an email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

More later,
Mike Abrams