The Vindy and the Valley — sustaining a vitality

On Christmas Eve, we dropped off the first installment of Valley kindheartedness to Chris and Steven Weston, whose dad was killed 12 days ago in a senseless store shooting in Youngstown.

Grandma Carole Weston was touched beyond words, as was her husband, Jim, and her son, Jim — or “Uncle Jim” if you read last week’s column that stoked a community goodwill effort for the boys. Through their tired eyes, there were traces of joy.

More than 50 people ensured there would be those traces during a hard time for them. At the Austintown Starbucks, the harshness of life and a cowardly killer ran full force into life’s resilient spirit and charitable citizens like Jim Cessna and Mark Ludwick and their truck of cheer for the boys.

It was not lost upon Carole.

“Please let people know that this does so much to remind us of the good that’s really in most people,” she said.

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Amid the tragedy engulfing her family, it is understandable that she felt differently a week ago — even about the media.

We laughed a bit about that Friday. When the media descended on her family a week earlier, she admitted her first thought was “vultures.”

She’s not the first, I offered. We understand that perception.

Media have a conflicting existence amid a complicated economy for us.

Contrast Carole’s gratefulness Friday with the crotchety cheer of my car guy — Charlie Jansinky in Struthers, where I walked in Friday to pay a bill.

“You’re selling less papers ... .”

“Your paper’s smaller ....”

“But I read you on Sundays ... .”

Charlie’s perception is not shared by the judge in the Oakhill trial — who called The Vindicator a monopolizing media in the Valley while limiting our access to critical discussion in the case.

The common thread through the contrasting views is basic — we’re here, and 2010 continued an effort at The Vindicator to secure our role and relevance in your lives. Life makes that hard to do some days.

We’re a market where a buck is hard to come by, yet more media companies jump into our market looking for those bucks.

Still we find it’s The Vindy that stands out in the personal ways, like with the Westons or Greatest Golfer of the Valley or Poland girls softball and more.

And we stand out in larger ways, like pursuing Oakhill court records or investing $10 million in downtown Youngstown or highlighting questionable actions of guys like David Venerose and others.

My New Year’s wish is simple: Stay invested in The Vindy and the Valley in 2011.

We can never be always on the same page, per se, and you would not want a newspaper you always agree with.

But more times than not we will be on the same page of greater good, and greater things will happen.

Like helping make Christmas a little brighter for two little boys.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes e-mails about stories and our newspaper. E-mail him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com.