This holiday season, our founder, owner and editor was asked to list the things he’s most thankful for being able to contribute to this community through this newspaper.
1, We brought the community together to support smart growth. When we began, there was an open hostility between the residents and the business community. We changed that by editorializing and covering events that demonstrated the way in which economic development and residential interests are not at odds, but can work together for a mutual community-wide benefit. This is our true and enduring legacy. We showed that tax revenues from economic development pay for schools and other residential community needs. This has been a great success story that can be seen when you compare F.C. today to area communities like McLean or Vienna where residential-only interests have prevailed. F.C. is unparalleled in terms of economic development that has paid for a new state of the art high school and middle school and vast improvements to the other schools while being able to offer competitive salaries for teachers even as the residential real estate tax rate has declined.
2. Longevity: We are in our 33rd year of consecutive weekly publication, never missing an edition for over 1,750 weeks since March 1991 despite very rarely enjoying a solid financial ground.
3. We are the community’s “glue” more generally. This is how Don Beyer has often described our role. We bring the community together and bind it by providing the news of the entire community every week such that it becomes the property of everyone in it.
4. We have a nearly flawless record of endorsing candidates in local elections who subsequently won, and this includes referenda. Since 1991, only two candidates for local office won that we did not endorse. Those roughly sharing our views now hold a solid majority on the City Council. on which, by the way, six out of seven are women, including the mayor.This we have achieved through rational, common sense editorial suasion convincing a highly educated readership. Before us, there were a lot of anonymous and last minute poison pen leaflets that were circulated the day before an election, for example.
5. We have championed DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) from our Day One. Our coverage contributed to the morale needed for parishioners of the historic Falls Church Episcopal to win a seven-year struggle against a band of arch-conservative members to leave the denomination in protest of the election of an openly-gay bishop who occupied the historic church grounds. This included standing staunchly against the anti-DEI influence of the breakaway group’s attempted influence on young people in the community through a pervasive Cornerstone youth program in the 1990s led by a man subsequently accused of sexual molestation, according to a recent report.
6. We have provided an opportunity for the employment and development of many of the community’s young people.
