 Hello, everyone. I'm James Mulan. Welcome to this episode of Million Dollar Gift, our series that really focuses and tries to at least identify and maybe even put some, a kind of value on something that can't really be valued in this way. And that is the volunteer energy that makes Arlington run. Today I am talking to Bob Sprague. Bob is the creator of your Arlington.com and he is a man about town, as anybody who has been to meetings or activities of all sorts or celebrations or commemorations, et cetera. Bob is there an awful lot of the time. If he's not, then one of his journalists is. So Bob, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to us today. Welcome. Glad to talk to you about something I love. I have to say that's clear from the evidence, right? Because you have been doing this with no compensation for yourself for a good long while now. In fact, tell us, how long ago did you start your Arlington time? I just celebrated the 14th year, December the 10th, 2006. That is when it launched. That is quite a run. Not the earliest hyperlocal website by any measure. They go back to the mid-1990s, but I was influenced by a book by Dan Gilmore called We the Media, which I read in 19, 2005, just after I was laid off from the globe. And it gave me the idea, wait a minute, I don't have to be laid off. I can continue to do this. That's wonderful. Let me ask you actually, before we come back to the origins of your Arlington, take us a little bit, give us a little sense of what you were doing up to 2005, 2006, obviously you've just mentioned that you were at the globe. So tell us about your own journalism background. I won't give you the whole resume, but it goes back to 1970 when I dropped out of being a PhD candidate in English at Lehigh University and just went down the street and got a job as a reporter. And I knew nothing about it. I learned everything that I learned in reporting right from the get-go at the Bethlehem Globe times, which I was fortunate to be working for when it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972. Connection there, I hope. I cannot say that I had anything to do with it. Hey, you were there. Some of my coworkers are there and it's exciting to work out of a small newspaper that won a Pulitzer Prize. Yeah, that is a remarkable accomplishment for a local newspaper, right? I did work for an even smaller newspaper after that called the Quaker Town Free Press. And in 1977, won a first prize in reporting for opening closed government meetings, a series of about 75 stories that led to the opening of previously closed meetings. Great to be involved. New England in 1982 worked for the Patriot Ledger, 85, worked for the Boston Herald, where I met my wife, Marjorie Howard. We were married in 89. We moved to Arlington and got married just about the same week. So you've been here since around 1989, 1990? My wife has been here since the 70s. I've been here since 89. And I left the Herald and taught for three years at Emerson College. And unfortunately, the professor whose seat I was taking came back. I had to get a job and that job turned out to be the editor of the advocate in 1994, 95. So you started in local media, obviously, in Bethlehem. And you then had quite a tenure with a number of different kinds of journalistic organizations or newspapers mostly. But then interestingly, after having some rich experience, both with the Herald and the Globe, major newspapers of the region you chose on some level to return to community media with the advocate before eventually launching your Arlington. So tell us a little bit about why you have spent so much time operating in really hyper-local contexts. I have some contrast there because I have worked when I worked at the Herald. And you're much farther away from the audience when you work for larger news organizations. For a smaller one, like the advocate, you've got somebody walking in the door and just telling you how you screwed up last week and telling it to your face. And so you have to swallow your pride and figure out what you did wrong and make it better. And I really enjoy the direct communication in addition to which I love Arlington. So I knew that whatever I was gonna do after the Globe, it would be connected to the town. And the whole story of what I've been doing is helping to explain to the town about itself. And it's really as simple as that. Yeah, simple but vitally important, you know. And the initial impetus for reaching out to you, though we could have done it at any point since we created this series, was the rumors that your Arlington may be in its last days. Happily you have confirmed that you will be operating at least through the middle of this coming year of 2021. I'm continuing. I need help. I have been doing it by myself for the most part from 2006 to 2014. About 2014, I began to pay writers and much more so since 2015 on to now. I have two regular writers, one select board and one school committee and they're excellent, but I need help beyond that. I will be in the new year looking for an ad sales person, not a great economy to be doing that. However, things are going to improve as the vaccine takes hold. So I do have a lot of confidence and optimism about what's coming next. I've also be looking for some partners. People will share the load. Right, no doubt about that. And we will do what we can at ACMI to amplify that message as best we can. Let me ask you though to look back, you said that you've been in Arlington as a resident for now 31 years or so. And that you love the place and clearly you do from the work that you do. What, just share some of your thoughts about what Arlington felt like, was like when you first moved in in 1989 and versus where things are today. When my wife and I moved here, it was just us and in what seemed like a big house on Washington Street. And since then, we've adopted two children who have grown up in this house. And when I first moved here, I really wasn't connected to the community. I did get the advocate and so I read the news, but once we adopted our first child, it was much more immediate connection to the town and the schools. Then of course, when I was editor of the advocate, you're just thrown into the middle of it. How long did you take the editorship of the advocate on? Not long enough, nine months. However, in that time, the paper won best newspaper in the country, 10,000 circulation and under. And part of that was me, but part of that was also Mark Levy who happened to be my best student when I taught at Emerson College and was fortunate enough to hire him. He now runs Cambridge Day.com, which is a partner of Earall, LinkedIn. Guess why? We're longtime allies. Absolutely. And it does seem like awards seem to coincidentally follow you around. So congratulations on that one. That is a remarkable achievement as well and one I didn't know. Well, it used to be on the paper's masthead, but they took it off. Well, that's a quite the accomplishment in a nine month tenure, that's for sure. I want to kind of push forward to your Arlington and ask you, where did the idea come from? Was it something that had been in gestation for a long time as far as you were concerned? Was it a sudden impulse, something in between? How did you decide to take that on? I guess you have to say, after the shock of being laid off from the globe and figuring out what to do with myself, I just sat down and it came to me like bling. After reading the book by Gilmour, We the Media, his, one of the points in his book is that the community can help be your reporters. So the basic idea behind your Arlington, hence the name, your Arlington, was to make it less my Arlington and more your Arlington. That is the people who would provide the information to describe Arlington to and to itself. I'd have to say that that experiment is remains unfulfilled. There's great potential out there for citizen journalism that remains to be tabbed. It's something that we- I think basic journalism can be taught. So whoever I'm dealing with here at the website, I'm always teaching. Yes, clearly you are, I'm sure, a teacher by nature. I spent 23 years teaching myself and really enjoy working with our interns at ACMI all the time both on their writing as well as how it is that they cover stories, et cetera. And it's, it is very, very fulfilling work to work with young minds who are really interested in this particular corner of the world of journalism and of the world we live in and just really kind of helping nudge them forward is it feels great, I gotta say. You took the, you know, you began the website, as you said, about 14 years ago, things have changed a lot over that course of time, over the course of time, even that, you know, mere decade and a half in that particular world. So how did you get things going? You know, how much of an education did you have to give yourself? I'm totally self-taught on the tech end. I learned basic HTML coding in the late 90s and in fact, started the town's website, which I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know that. The first iterations of the town's website, which is now much more professionally run. I did and I got files from Paul Schlichman and some others who contributed image files and put it together and it became the town's website. So I- Did you do that as a volunteer? At first, but then I did get a job as the school's information person working for Kay Dunovan. And then six months later, the town in the IT department, in the comptroller's office, strangely enough, agreed to another halftime job doing the town's website. So I brought all those files with me and we got going. Man, you have had your fingers in an awful lot of pies in this town, that's for sure. To start my own website, though, I had to learn a new language and that underlies what you see today. And that language called Jumla, a African word that means community, has kept growing through the years, over 15 years, to become a much better platform than it was when I started, much more stable. Great, yeah, I mean, you've got enough challenges just to get your work done without having to worry about those headaches all the time. You had mentioned a few minutes ago in talking about the need for and your own commitment to citizen journalism, that you felt like it's not been as successful as you would like. Do you have any idea why that is? Well, be humble about it, it's so many hours in the day. And I think where I to start this venture over again, I probably start with seeking partners to start with rather than do everything myself and then try to figure out how do I get myself out of this now? You really need help as your own little community to be more effective in the community as a whole. So in the new year, I'm gonna be seeking help. Yeah, it's only taking you 14, 15 years to figure that out, right? Just kidding. The, your conception for your Arlington, I know from talking to you over the years that it's not like you set out to make it a kind of pro bono enterprise, you know. It was a dot com from the start and a hope to make money. But it's made only a limited amount of money and the amount of money that I do make, I pay people and I put into software. Don't pay myself. Yeah, and I think that bears repeating. This is a 14 plus year effort of yours now for which you have not received any recompense. In fact, I can say that when the family has had some hard times sometimes and we came up a little short in the month, I would transfer some money over from my business account into my home account and just remember, okay, I just took a loan there. And it gets paid back eventually, but the one has helped the other. Well, I mean, it sounds like you've been very scrupulous about it, but it doesn't matter. I mean, however often that's happened, it's nothing compared to the many, many, many months now all put together that you have been doing this work basically for the benefit of the community and not for your own at least fiscal reward. Speaking of which though, how rewarding is it? Has it been for you and in what way? I simply wouldn't do this if I didn't love it and I continue to love it and I can't wait to get going every morning to who's written me? What's the latest controversy coming over the transom? How can I best and most fairly and most accurately portray it? Because even though I did work at the Herald for six years, I was not comfortable with some of their portrayal of news. I'm much more comfortable with the way the globe portrays news. That's just a personal matter. And I think Arlington as a community deserves accuracy and fairness and I try to give it to them. And when people don't agree with me, believe me, they let me know. Well, on that subject in a sense, over the course of the many years you've been in Arlington and you've seen tons of changes, but even in the time that your Arlington has been in existence, boy, a lot of different things have happened and major controversies have arisen and either been resolved or worked through in some way, et cetera. Out of all that stuff, are there a few things that either stories or situations that really stick out as having been particularly challenging for you to cover? Sure. And I'll probably put my foot in my mouth by saying this, but if you go back to 2007, when there was a controversy involving the Otteson principal and a teacher, I broke that story. And it was a journalistic feat, you might say, to break it. However, I made a lot of people mad at me about that. And I'll just have to say in retrospect, looking back over the years, this story, by the way, was settled in the favor of the school district back in 2013 and the people involved in 2007 were fired. That's a direct result of the controversy. I think in retrospect, I probably would have handled things differently than I did. I probably would. The investigation involving the school committee and two people wasn't complete at the time that I published it. I was provided documents that justified the investigation, but I think in retrospect, I might have waited a little bit there. So lessons learned. And I have to say, I'm willing to dig into things and look into things, but I'm not at heart a muck breaker. I'm at heart an explainer. And there's a difference. Oh, there certainly is. There certainly is. And I think that a lot of the time, I think that the explaining part, the sharing and disseminating of useful information, within the town, is really the best that we can do in a lot of ways. And I think we're also fortunate to operate in a town which generally, at least in my experience, which is much shorter time than yours, but at least in my experience, this town is most of the leaders and decision makers in this town, it seems to me, do their jobs responsibly enough where I don't feel like we have to be going out and digging in the dirt to find out what's really going on here. I wonder whether you agree or not. I definitely agree with that. The public officials I deal with in Arlington are among the most informed and above board and straightforward I have ever dealt with through 50 years of following journalism. So I know I come in for the criticism that I'm just brown nosing town hall, but hey, I'm just calling it as I see it and I believe they're good people. Yeah, and you've spent the time, frankly, at the hours and hours and hours of listening to the deliberations first hand in countless meetings. I think you've spent the time to earn your right to speak as a truly informed person about that. So others might disagree, of course, but I think you speak from experience and that can't be denied. All right, Bob, you were saying that you're excited about what's coming up in the new year and optimistic. Glad to hear that and to share some of that with you. Tell us a little bit though, kind of push us forward here to June and beyond. What do you see coming up for your Arlington and for yourself? I can't give away too many secrets, but I think one of the things I've concluded over the past 14 years that I've tried to do too much and there are certain aspects of town life I can't get to. And so you may well be seeing a change in your Arlington away from perhaps what might be called meeting news toward people news. Now, someone may think, okay, that's warm and fuzzy, but the fact is I've got a great writer working for me called Marjorie Howard, my wife, and she does excellent people stories and we will be continuing those. And we may be covering less meetings than fewer meetings than in the past. Now, if somebody doesn't like that, I'll say step up, want to cover a meeting for me, go for it. Right. Well, you've mentioned that you, you know, the folks that you do have on staff, so to speak, the writers that you have are that's, that is their beat. So that is their beat. And say for school committee, I would think the school committee reporter continues to report meetings going forward, particularly during budget season. This will not be a surprise to the select board reporter because I've discussed this with her. We may be doing different kinds of town stories that come out of a select board meeting, but aren't necessarily the nitty gritty of everything that happened and every vote that occurred at the meeting. Hey, we have ACMI for that. Well, it is true, right? And, you know, we will provide that, that coverage going forward in all the excruciating detail anybody could desire. So I think it's sound, you sound energized by the idea of moving in the direction that you're talking about. So I think that that sound, you know, I think that sounds very promising. Well, I hope so, but there's also a balance involved in life. And so you have to balance what you're doing at home and what you're doing in the community. And I, I favor that. You've been at this a long time. A long time now and in a bunch of different places. And as we've mentioned, different contexts, different approaches, but on the hyper local. Community media question. What advice do you have for people like our interns at ACMI who are really just starting out, but they've chosen ACMI over other internships that they could have because they are already drawn on some level to this hyper local coverage. What, what, what, what, what of your amassed wisdom? Can you, can you share with folks like them? I think that encouraging them to keep an eye on the local, which, which if they are working with you, they be by, by, to me that over, over the years that I've been in journalism that people always wanted to go to the bigger paper or the bigger organization. And there are definite advantages to paying attention to what's, what's at home. And they, young kids may not want to hear that, but I think it's true. Right. And it's clearly brought a professional lifetime of satisfaction and gratification to you. Though it is clearly also, you know, needs to be said, been hard work. So I want to thank you for talking to us today. I want to thank you for all these years. And we look forward to speaking to you again, perhaps when you start on your next venture, who knows. But we also, I do want to mention our appreciative of our own collaboration, ACMI with your Arlington, which really is fruitful for us. And, and I hope and assume for you as well. It's, it's the longest collaboration I've had of any advertiser or other media group. So we go way back. And one of the earliest stories I ever did was the story about the history of ACMI. So what it came from. Yes, that for another day. Gotcha. Your dear viewers. All right, I've been talking to Bob Sprague, the creator and the main man behind your Arlington.com, which has been serving our community really very ably for 14 plus years now and counting. This has been a million dollar gift. I'm James Milan. Thanks for joining us.