Lance

A Fredericksburg icon returns downtown

This cartoon was drawn for the FXBG Advance.

When I worked for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1997-1998, there were newsboys. I’d see kids selling the SB in traffic on my way back to my hotel during my first month in Hawaii. It was an old sight for my colleagues, but it was the first time I had seen newsboys selling newspapers. We were an afternoon newspaper, so the timing was perfect for me to catch them.

When I was hired by The Free Lance-Star in 1998, there weren’t newsboys, but there was Lance, a statue in front of the newspaper building. Lance was erected in 1994 as a tribute to the newsboys of the past.

Lance was part of our home, not just for us at the paper but for downtown itself. The newspaper was situated at one of the entrances to downtown, just across the street from the Confederate Cemetary (me and my buddy Mitch, who worked for the radio station, used to play guitars in the cemetery during our lunch breaks).

As with most things you see every day, you start to take it for granted that it’s there. I took Lance for granted after a while. I rarely even used the front entrance, so it got to be rare for me to pass him. But I did put him into a cartoon once.

When the newspaper started to struggle a bit, the yearly bonuses stopped. Of course, we were promised they would return, but you know how that goes. To say the staff was unhappy with this development is an understatement. We had an in-house newsletter (which also eventually stopped), but I submitted a cartoon for it. This was so long ago that I don’t remember if they printed it (I don’t think so), but the cartoon was seen by most of the staff, nonetheless.

The view of the cartoon was from outside the building, looking towards the office of our editor, Ed Jones. Ed is on the phone while looking out the window at Lance, saying, “Yes, there has been some displeasure with ending the yearly bonuses.” Lance has an angry look on his face while mooning Ed Jones. Later, some of my colleagues asked, “How are you not fired yet?” I think most of the management had a sense of humor about it, except for my editor. He wasn’t as upset about the cartoon as he was with the perception that I had risked my job. He said, “I can’t protect you this time,” as if I was always doing things.

As I mentioned, the end of yearly bonuses was a harbinger. Soon after, the newsletter stopped. Ed Jones used to leave a weekly voicemail for the staff, introducing new employees to the news division. Those used to be kind of annoying, which I took for granted. Of course, they stopped when the hiring stopped. And then our salaries were cut, and soon after, the layoffs began. They got me in the third round.

The newspaper declared bankruptcy in 2014, four years after investing $45 million in a new press. The paper was sold in 2014 to Sandton Capital Partners, a corporation that had zero interest in operating a newspaper and more interest in bleeding it dry for all they could get. They felt they had done that within a year and sold it again. This owner was BH Media, a company owned by Warren Buffett (when he says he loves and respects newspapers, he’s lying), which continued to bleed the newspaper dry, sold off its assets, and rented a location in Central Park (a glorified tacky neon-lit strip mall, but the geese are nice). Today, FLS is owned by Lee Enterprises, a newspaper chain that specializes in producing shitty newspapers. What has six pages and shit for news? The Free Lance-Star A-section…on a good day.

Lance moved with the paper to Central Park, but then that building was purchased by Mary Washington HealthCare (MWHC), and the paper had to move again, to an even smaller office, but Lee left Lance behind, which is another sign that newspaper chains don’t care about the communities they cover.

Did I mention the old newspaper office, where I worked for 14 years, was demolished for apartments and a hotel (a brick from the old newspaper building is on my window sill)? The hotel is named The Publisher, in tribute to the newspaper that used to occupy those grounds.

The hotel, understanding the rich history and legacy of The Free Lance-Star better than Lee Enterprises or the other two blood-sucking companies that owned it since 2014, wanted Lance to come home.

The chairman of the hotel’s company, Chairman William J. Vakos Jr, said, “It seemed like the appropriate place. It’s a reminder to the whole community of the contribution that The Free Lance–Star has made to the community for over 100 years.” When MWHC was asked for Lance, they donated the statue to return Lance home.

MWHC issued a statement: “It’s an honor to help secure this piece of our community’s history and restore it to a place of meaning and prominence.”

I have not read a copy of The Free Lance-Star since 2012, when I was laid off (and I don’t subscribe to the online edition). I pick it up from time to time in convenience stores, and I’m disgusted with what they’ve done to our newspaper each time. But I’m proud of the work I did for FLS. I’m proud of the work we did. I’m proud we got to work for a great newspaper and the legacy we built. I’m proud to be a small part of that. So this cartoon isn’t just my tribute to Lance, but to everyone who worked in that building.

And look. This time I didn’t draw Lance with his ass hanging out.

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