The road back to Decorah and the return of the opinion page

“These directions are wrong,” my mother said. “They must’ve been thinking we would come up from the south.”

The year was 1990-something, my cousin was graduating from Luther College, and my mother’s calm declaration from the front seat of our family’s trusty Toyota Camry was enough to pull my eyes up from the magazine I was reading (the latest copy of the since discontinued youth magazine “Disney Adventures” — that particular issue’s main feature was on an upcoming film called “Titanic” starring some rising teen heartthrob I’d never heard of named Leonardo DiCaprio). As I lazily peered over the top of the pages and out the car’s windshield, we crested the hill and I got my first real look at Decorah. Highway 52 seemed like the longest ribbon of road I’d ever seen in my life — little did I know how many times I would ride down this community’s hills in the decades to come.

I don’t recall if we were there during commencement, but I distinctly remember passing by the distinct fence line of what I now know to be the Porter House Museum as we walked to the brick house my cousin and her friends were renting at the time. It didn’t take long for my uncle to suggest he take my brother and I to the Whippy Dip for some ice cream – a memory that rises anew each time my own children stand at that same service window (with great anticipation, mind you).

Then it was 2004…at least I think it was. The girl I was dating back then wanted to take a road trip with our friends for her birthday that year and spend a day at her dad’s cabin just west of Decorah. It was the first time I ate Mabe’s Pizza — and it definitely was not the last. Within a year, nearly every one of the teens gathered around that table were in different cities, if not different states, as we each began the next chapter of their lives.

And I was no exception — come the fall of 2005, I began my time at Iowa State University, while my girlfriend moved into a dorm at Luther College.

It was probably 2007, when that same girl and I shared a long hug in a parking lot on campus one Sunday afternoon. Goodbyes were never easy for me back then. I’d left much later than I meant to — a habitual happening back then — and I wondered whether we could keep this long-distance thing going until graduation. The wind cast ripples through her hair and the red dress she was wearing as she shrank in the reflection of my pitifully small car’s rearview mirror. Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” started to play on the radio…which didn’t help my emotional state much. Guess I’ve always been more than a bit of a softy.

Maybe that’s partly why she agreed to marry me a few years later.

It was 2023 when several pieces of our lives coalesced, and life offered our family the chance to call Decorah our new home — it was pretty hard to say no, honestly. We had, of course, been back many times over the years to visit family — in fact, an offhand remark from a relative was the pebble that got the boulder rolling for us. But in what felt like no time at all, we were considering job offers, making site visits and ultimately diving headlong into the commitment of moving.

It always seemed to be windy when we’d make our pseudo secret stops in Decorah that summer. But the breezes that swept through the tree tops were different than they had been in that college parking lot years earlier — a hello, rather than a goodbye. The feeling wasn’t unlike gazing out onto that stretch of highway again — life was full of possibilities for me and my young family, but this time I was in the front seat.

Then suddenly it was May of 2024, and I was steering the last carload of our belongings eastward. The sun was going down, and the familiar valley of Decorah opened up before me once again, like a Grant Wood painting.

“Almost home,” I said to myself.

Well, alright, I’ll admit I made sure to say it out loud then so I could truthfully include it in my tale now, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I knew my way home. 

In fact, I’ve been tapping my foot in anticipation of my first day here. Newspaper work is more than familiar to me than most anything these days, so perhaps it’s fitting I should begin it again in such a familiar setting, and I’m ready to tell this community’s stories. 

But a truly worthwhile newspaper doesn’t exist in a vacuum as they say. It has to be rooted in the community itself. And that’s what we at this paper aim to do, dear reader — provide you quality news from faces and names you know. It’s perhaps not that lofty of a goal, but it’s a worthy one.

The reality is, local newspapers have the opportunity to tell the kinds of stories their readers can’t get anywhere else. We can bicker about what the metro newspapers are writing or what the talking heads on cable news are saying (though I’ll maintain until my dying day that nearly everything on any cable news show is in fact not news but opinion disguised in the vestiges of journalism), but they aren’t the ones covering your city council meeting, or your county fair or Nordic Fest for that matter. In short, the big guys don’t carry the truly awesome burden which local journalists bear each week — that is to say, they don’t run into their readers at the grocery store on a Wednesday afternoon. 

A local newspaper is part of its community and by extension is a reflection of the community — for better or worse. It highlights the triumphs while also being capable of fairly reporting its shortcomings — not shouting from a mountaintop of self importance, but with the main street awareness that there is a starting line ahead of any positive change. Many a would-be journalist has led themselves astray by believing the best use of the words wrought in each week’s ink is to simply tear down the proverbial other. And that’s how we become mired in any number of hopeless divides, dear reader — left vs. right, blue collar vs. white collar, The Munsters vs. The Addams Family.

Now, I’ve been in town for a little bit at this point. I read up on the Decorah Posten and its declared purpose of providing relevant news without the politics — again, perhaps not a lofty goal, but definitely a worthy one. You see, back in the days of the Posten, it wasn’t uncommon for newspapers to be affiliated with a particular political party — in fact, I’ve seen archived clippings from Iowa publications of the late 1880s which strongly implied party allegiance was a key component of a successful newspaper. 

However, in today’s world, newsworthy stories and political happenings are more than intertwined — politics moves fast these days and can affect all our lives just as quickly. That said, I believe the spirit of the Posten’s stance can still be applied today.

Honest reporting isn’t dead.

Political happenings can (and should) be reported without opinion — that’s what good journalists (you know, the kind you might run into at the grocery store from time to time) do. They have the ability to set aside their own personal views — specifically they set them aside here on the opinion page if said opinion is so cumbersome that it’s truly got to go somewhere.

And there’s room for you too, dear reader.

It’s been said the opinion page is the heart of any newspaper, and it’s a space that’s available as much to the community as it is to the news staff. 

So, we want to hear from you, honestly. There are some limits — we’re not printing slanderous accusations, and we’re going to keep the opinion page as hyper-local as possible (meaning the mass mailing sent to us by a rancher in Idaho who has strong opinions about a Supreme Court decision will promptly go in what my former boss called the round file). 

But you, dear reader, are welcome to let us know what you think. Tell us how you feel about what you see in the community or across the country. Share your thoughts on our work — the good and the bad.

For it’s a poor paper that doesn’t listen to its community.

Agree with Seth? Think he’s got it completely backwards or he’s missed the point entirely? Let your voice be heard. Letters to the editor may be emailed to editor@decorahleader.com or dropped off at 110 Washington St. Suite 4 in Decorah.