MANSFIELD, Ohio — Mansfield is home for me, has been for 25 years.
I’m grateful it will remain home after beginning work this week as Associate Editor at the Richland Source.
I learned long ago a Mansfield journalist is never bored. Often flustered, frequently jaded, constantly overworked. Never bored.
During my initial interview in 1990, I arrived the day after a MANCI prison escape was foiled when inmates tied together bedsheets and hung them from a window. It made for a sorry ladder, but a great photo.
The publisher conducting that interview, Jess Allred, referenced the picture and said simply, “Worked all over the country, for its size, this is a GREAT news town.”
Over the past quarter century, Mansfield has consistently proven that claim. We’ve had everything from brushes with Hollywood to national crime stories.
Clearly this city was wounded by the economic downturn in the last decade, the collapse in the housing market, and the decline in manufacturing jobs. But there is cause for optimism, too. Mention the Shawshank Trail, the Halloween experience at the Ohio State Reformatory, the Pumpkin Glow at Kingwood Center or Christmas at Malabar Farm and the pride in our community bubbles to the surface.
It’s that energy the Richland Source aims to tap into. I hope to help do exactly that.
Perhaps fittingly, a quarter century after that initial interview, I’m working for Jess Allred’s son, Jay Allred. Unfortunately for Jay, some of the foibles from my previous experience have followed me here.
Jay and editor Rhonda Bletner have already discovered a nickname colleagues teased me with for years. A long time ago, upon introduction to a new computer system, a tech person insisted it was impossible to lose a story via that OS. I immediately lost the very first story I typed into it, prompting the exasperated tech person to exclaim, “You must be a human virus!”
On the first day here, my computer expired. On the second day, the Internet connection wobbled. On the third day, the new computer shut down. On the fourth day, the IT department called for out-of-town reinforcements.
I don’t know if I’ll get a fifth day.
If so, feel free to call me with a story idea or news tip. I’ve made a career of telling your stories and their impact in our community. I look forward to continuing that endeavor, if the technology allows.
Larry@richlandsource.com
419-989-6119