It turned out that the best part of my Super Bowl weekend wasn’t the big game after all.
The highlight for me came during Friday night’s pep rally in Doylestown, when I looked out across a sea of smiling, cheering Eagles fans and felt extraordinarily proud of us all.
While the Bucks County Herald organized the “Bucks County Loves the Birds” pep rally, it wasn’t our event. It was the people’s.
The fans who donned Eagles gear and turned out in front of the old courthouse brought the joy, the camaraderie and the sense of family that was everywhere I looked.
It was written on the faces of kids, where it shone as brightly as the green, silver and black paint many wore to show their spirit.
It was embedded in every movement, cheer and note we saw and heard from local dancers, cheerleaders and musicians.
And it was expressed by the long list of speakers who, sometimes passionately and sometimes eloquently, described their love of the Birds, their Bucks County fans and the game that brought us out of our houses on a Friday night in February to be together.
Yes, we enthusiastically thank our sponsors, particularly Woods Services, The Thompson Organization, Penn Community Bank and the Herald Foundation for the monetary and in-kind support that made the night possible.
But the pride that washed over me on Friday came from seeing what residents, local businesses, and a newspaper can accomplish when they work together.
That partnership, and the role we can play in it, has put a spring in my step on this Monday after the Super Bowl.
Sure, in the office this morning, we’ve lamented Jalen Hurts’ game-shifting turnover, the failure of the Eagles defense to lock down the Chiefs in the second half, and the holding penalty that sealed the Birds’ defeat on Sunday night.
But here at the Bucks County Herald, we’re also thinking about the great start it has been to 2023.
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I’ve now been in the editor’s chair for two months and I haven’t yet shared much about where this year will take the Herald.
I’d like to mention a few things now.
I see 2023 as a year of expansion for the Herald. We want the Herald to cover more of Bucks County so, without cutting coverage in our wheelhouse communities, you will gradually start to see more stories from places like Middletown, Warrington, Warminster, Souderton and Telford as we add more freelance writers.
Again without changing the look and feel of the weekly print publication, we’ll be honing our digital strategy to flow more of our best and most-timely journalism to buckscountyherald.com earlier in the week. Our print edition will continue to come out every Thursday. But we’re going to give you reasons to visit our website every day.
We’ll also continue our efforts to bring local artists’ work in various mediums to a broader audience.
To that end, I’m excited to announce today’s launch of Poet’s Corner, a new weekly feature that we hope will bring local poets into the mainstream.
We’re teaming up with Bucks County Poet Laureate, Dr. Tom Mallouk on this project and his passion for the art form is contagious.
Mallouk will curate the entries, with help from the Bucks County Community College Poet Laureate Program.
“The Bucks County community has an extraordinary level of poetic talent that deserves a wider audience,” Mallouk said.
The project is being sponsored by Marv and Dee Ann Woodall in its first year.
“This is a very exciting new opportunity for the readers of the Herald to learn more about the wealth of poetic talent which we are blessed to have here in Bucks County,” said Marv Woodall, who is also a Bucks County Herald Foundation board member.
We discussed whether to put each week’s poems in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper.
But, ultimately, I want to feature it on the Opinion page. As fans of our Opinion page know, it can get a little bit tense there. I think a poem is just what the page needs to let the reader cleanse the palate before turning the page.
Enjoy this week’s Herald. I’ll be back with more in a few weeks.
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