Editor’s note: August marked Xpress’ 30-year anniversary. Throughout September we’ll be celebrating the milestone with articles, photo spreads and reflections from current and former staff members. Thank you for reading Xpress, and please consider becoming a member.
By Cecil Bothwell
My writing career has been largely coincident with the life of this paper. When I was first struggling to contrive a life in wordsmithing, I sold a news story or two, then some cartoons to Green Line and nabbed a slot writing monthly humor columns for that paper’s Grin Line page. In those technologically prehistoric times, articles were delivered on paper, and I learned I could get paid a few more bucks if I stopped in and transcribed them myself on an office computer.
The Fund for Investigative Reporting and Editing (FIRE) had an office on the Xpress floor of the Miles Building downtown, and I got to know its executive director, Calvin Allen. FIRE underwrote investigative journalism that regional periodicals couldn’t otherwise afford.
Early in 1994, I stumbled on a hot tip regarding federal suppression of a Research Triangle Institute study of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) school program, which purported to reduce drug use among teens. RTI’s results showed that DARE students used more drugs earlier than peers who didn’t get the “benefit” of the federally backed effort. That was not the message officials wanted to hear.
DARE was in use in Asheville and Buncombe County schools. I pitched the story to Calvin; he gave me the go-ahead; and editing was finished just when Xpress was aborning. Bingo! My first cover story! On the first Xpress cover!
Wild horses couldn’t drag me away after that. I was convinced I could actually make a decent living as a writer. I continued to contribute occasional stories for the paper.
Herding the flock
During that same time, my Green Line humor columns had led to recruitment as a community commentator on WNCW 88.7 FM, which led to my hiring as a writer/editor at the Environmental Leadership Center at Warren Wilson College, where I became founding editor of the quarterly journal Heartstone.
Between my history with Xpress and my lately honed editorial chops, I successfully applied for the managing editorship when the job opening came up in 2002.
Nota bene: “Editor” and “managing editor” are wildly different beasts. Managing has very little to do with shaping content (which I love, and at which I think I’m fairly handy). It is about choosing content and then chasing reporters, photographers, artists and others around in circles like a border collie until the whole flock is herded into a pen known as “this week’s issue.” I have deep respect for those who do that well. I was not that dog.
So, I was reclassified as a reporter and gardening editor and was allowed to do some of the most meaningful work in my long life while garnering a weekly paycheck.
The magic of reporting
Being a reporter is magical. You have a legitimate excuse to look into anything going on around you. And a press pass. Being a reporter for a weekly doubles that magic because you have time to turn over rocks and see what’s wiggling, then think a bit and poke around in the attic to see if you can rouse some bats.
Whether it was radioactive liquid dripping from a tanker truck on Interstate 26, groundwater pollution at the Sayles Bleachery site, questionable county hiring, a survivor of the World War II internment of Japanese citizens teaching organic growing in West Asheville, recovery of the resident otter population or local in-depth preelection coverage no one else cared to report, Xpress was on the job.
The biggest investigation this paper allowed me to pursue over several years involved Buncombe County’s criminal sheriff, Bobby Lee Medford. More than six months of work came together as a well-documented account of his illegal gambling enterprise.
Local truly matters
A weekly paper has time and takes time to dig in. A paper with a 30-year history in our community is an essential part of the social fabric. The editors and writers and photographers and artists and ad salespersons and distribution angels who make Xpress happen live here. Local, as the longtime slogan accurately insists, matters.
I moved on from employment at this paper in 2007, but it remains the paper of record for me in this place I have called home since 1980. TGIW, folks!
Cecil Bothwell is a former managing editor of Xpress and the author of The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire, Pure Bunkum: The Life and Crimes of Buncombe County Sheriff Bobby Lee Medford and most recently, That’s Life (as we know it).
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