A privilege and a responsibility

Life is short and full of complications. It’s the stories that survive.

Based on what I know of Pioneer publisher Eli Lutgens, that’s what I believe its readers will find to be one of the newspaper’s greatest strengths: its dedication to sharing people’s stories.

Some of you may remember me as a writer who worked for the Waseca Weekly for 5 or 6 years back in the 1980s. Some of you may also know that, after a few years writing for Walter Mishek’s Arabian Horse Times in the late ‘80s, I became a teacher and joined the staff at NRHEG, where I have now been teaching nearly 30 years, for a while in the German department, but mostly in English.

I bring all this up only to let you know how “wise” I must be by now, or at least, how much opportunity I have had for growth. Oh, and so that I can mention Eli was among my students, graduating from NRHEG in 2016. In case you’re doing any mental math, yes, the lad is 24 years old. He tells me that, having become publisher of the Star Eagle at 23, he is/was the youngest newspaper publisher in the U.S., shy only by one year of being youngest on the continent.

I guess it also gives me the chance to mention that I worked with (then) sports writer Jim Lutgens at the Weekly in the ‘80s. Unlike mine, Jim’s path never strayed far from journalism: after leaving the Weekly, he went on to work for two larger publications before becoming the owner of the New Richland Star and the Ellendale Eagle. He combined the two into the NRHEG Star Eagle in 2007 and was the paper’s publisher until 2021. 

But back to my original point. While being an English teacher is a vastly different calling from being a reporter, I hope it’s easy to see the bridge which joins them: stories.

So, although my work as a teacher and activity advisor is time consuming and demanding, my love and appreciation for recording and sharing the occasional story sometimes draws me back irresistibly to my roots in journalism. I tell my students that the opportunity to share someone’s story is both a privilege and a responsibility.

The “privilege” rests in the opportunity to speak richly with others about their experiences and observations. The “responsibility” lies in recording and sharing that story with character and integrity: in honoring the trust inherent in the process.

Eli gets that.

On those occasions when I have time to write for him (translation: summer), Eli never simply takes the text and publishes it. He reads it first. He responds to it. He allows himself to connect with the people and the experiences. He takes genuine delight in being the first to learn the story.

So that’s why I’m writing this column. To tell you to expect great things from this fellow. He’s already shown, of course, that he is energetic, driven, determined. That he can overcome difficult odds. This newspaper is proof of that.

But what I want to share with you is that, darn it, he’s a sensitive, considerate, caring fellow.  From what I can tell, his first priority for this publication is to provide a service to the community, to find and record its stories. The business aspects, selling the subscriptions and finding the advertisers, are really just a means to that end. So, in my humble opinion, that’s what you can expect from Eli, and from his kindred spirit Michael: You can expect to be seen not only as an advertiser or subscriber, but as an individual with an individual, yet somehow universal, story. A story that, unless you somehow evade them, they would love to tell sometime.