Dear Red Bank,
Years ago, I was sitting, beer in hand, in my backyard on South Street.
I had this sudden compulsion to get up and peek through an opening to an enclosed space in my home’s foundation.
It was a hole that I’d never bothered to look in. But the thought occurred to me that it was my home and I should know what’s in there.
I had this sense that if I grabbed a flashlight and went looking, I might find something.
Sure enough, I did. I fished out a dusty glass bottle.
It was a bottle from the HG Degenring bottling company of Red Bank. Henry Degenring was the first owner of the house, purchased somewhere around 1908.
I’d just been reading about him in old copies of the Red Bank Register.
The old bottle, an artifact of my home’s origin and identity, laid buried beneath the structure that it helped build.
That bottle was cleaned, polished and put on display in my house.
That event happened to be the first time that my name ever appeared in redbankgreen news. Here’s the video from that day.
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Something that I’ve always felt, although I couldn’t succinctly articulate why, is that Red Bank is special.
It’s deep down in there.
Many of us feel that way.
In Facebook groups, it’s clear that people who once lived here long ago still feel that way too.
Their hearts were left in Red Bank.
Why is this?
You could rattle off a million reasons, like —
When you live in Red Bank, you can be young as long as you want to be.
The imperfections are part of the perfection.
From here, that river seems to flow just about anywhere. It can take us, or our message, to the world.
But no matter what adventures we embark on — our home, our families, and a piece of ourselves will always be in Red Bank.
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It occurred to me recently that local news doesn’t really have any value by itself.
Its value is in relation to something that a community really cares about — the community’s values.
If you love redbankgreen, it’s really because you love Red Bank and what it stands for.
Maybe redbankgreen should hold itself responsible for unearthing the things we appreciate about it.
And you know, polishing them up and putting them on display.
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This has been an extraordinary year for redbankgreen.
John T. Ward, the founding publisher, finally passed on the torch.
Brian, Katie, me, and many of you (via partyline) helped tell the story of Red Bank in ways we had never done before. We had fun. We won awards.
Perhaps as important, we had an impact beyond Red Bank. The influence of our tiny little Red Bank newsroom is growing nationally, and even internationally.
We’ve shared our vision and insight on podcasts, many conferences, schools of journalism (CUNY) and delivered keynotes.
The largest news organization in Texas has been aligning itself with our approach to serving businesses.
I’ll personally be visiting and working with an association of local news publishers following suit in Australia soon.
Like Count Basie, Kevin Smith, and other notable Red Bankers, our special something is going to once again make its mark on the world.
And like all great efforts, it’s a group effort.
You and our partners, like YMCA, Antique Center, Monmouth Meats, Chris Havens, Kyle Reed, Deluxe Landscape Management, Triumph, RiverCenter, OceanFirst Bank — and soon Canopy Crossing and Colony House — believe in what we’re doing and make our work possible.
They get bleeding edge local news and digital marketing advice too, but that’s just a pleasant side effect.
At some point I may need more of your help, so I’d ask that you consider, when the day comes, if you’d like to be a bigger part of what we’re doing here — even if in a very small way.
Happy New Year. Here’s to a fun and prosperous Red Bank.
Long live local news.
PS: Or better yet, 5000 years (picture below from a trip to Cairo this year)
