When I accepted my internship at The Lincoln County News, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had only ever been to Chandler for a middle school basketball tournament, where my very important 20 points per game surely left a lasting impact. No biggie.
Other than that, Lincoln County was mostly unfamiliar to me. I had spent most of my life around Oklahoma City and Edmond, and the newsroom consisted of only three people: editor Emily Kalka, office manager Crystal Simpson and me. If the three of us did not get along, the internship could have felt a lot longer than eight weeks.
It felt more like a few days.
I knew things were going to click when, on my first day, Emily suggested a series I had already been brainstorming before I could even pitch it: a series on the “forgotten” towns of Lincoln County.After visiting some of those places, “forgotten” no longer feels like the right word.
The towns may be small, and some may not look like what they once did, but the people who care about them have not forgotten anything.
My favorite story I worked on was about Kendrick, a small town in northeast Lincoln County. The challenge with writing about some of Oklahoma’s smallest communities is that there often is not much information readily available. After reading what little I could find online, I decided to drive up to Kendrick and do some classic boots-on-the-ground reporting.
Luckily, it did not take long. There was still a well-maintained city hall building with its lights on and doors open. Patricia Webb was there, and she was exactly the person I was hoping to find. She had compiled Kendrick’s history in scrapbooks and albums, and the walls were lined with memorabilia, class photos and late 19thand early 20th-century photos from the town’s earliest years and heyday.
I spent hours there speaking with her about the town’s history and logging information. A Kendrick resident eventually came in and later agreed to an interview.
The part I appreciated most came after the article was published. A father and son connected to one of the original owners of the buildings at the center of my story came into our office to meet me and talk about the article. One of them said a relative in town he had not spoken with in about a year called him after reading the article and told him he needed to grab a copy. They both purchased subscriptions to the paper.
It was awesome to see the story’s impact directly. I’ve learned that I really love getting to know a small town, listening and treating people’s stories as worth preserving. Having that work matter to someone in that way is a feeling I will be chasing for as long as I am working in journalism.
It is easy to talk about community journalism in broad terms, but it feels different when you are walking a deer drive with a game warden or talking with a resident about a hometown that has slowly faded away.
I am grateful to the Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation for giving me the opportunity to spend the summer at The Lincoln County News. I am also grateful to everyone in Lincoln County who took the time to talk with me, answer my questions and let me tell a small part of their stories. The Lincoln County News showed me what community journalism can be, and I will not forget that.