By Christina Dimeo
\nEditor<\/p>\n
From simple beginnings as a one-page monthly newsletter for Lake Monticello residents, the Fluvanna Review<\/em>has grown into a thriving weekly newspaper covering news throughout Fluvanna County.<\/p>\n In the years since the first edition was printed in July 1979, the world has changed. While print once dominated the market, now many people get their news from TV or online. This shift has affected advertising, and with online ads selling for pennies on the dollar, necessity has driven many once-free newspapers to sell subscriptions to remain in business.<\/p>\n Through it all, the Fluvanna Review <\/em>has spent the last 40 years publishing news affecting Fluvanna residents\u2019 daily lives \u2013 for free. Its coverage of local government, schools, business, art, human interest and crime is unsurpassed.<\/p>\n As the paper turns 40, the Fluvanna Review<\/em>took the opportunity to look back through the years.<\/p>\n Birth of the Bulletin<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The first house at Lake Monticello was built in 1971, and four years later, 50 homes stood in the development \u2013 enough to necessitate a newsletter. So in April 1975, five Lake residents got together and started what would someday become the Fluvanna Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n The first issue of the Residents\u2019 Association News Bulletin<\/em>, a one-page monthly newsletter, championed the paving of Route 600, which was then a dirt road.<\/p>\n The newsletter hummed along for four years until one pivotal day in July 1979, when retiree Len Gardner, who had moved to the Lake a year earlier, volunteered to take over as Bulletin <\/em>editor.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a collective sigh of relief,\u201d Gardner said in a 2014 interview. \u201cNo one else wanted the job.\u00a0 And as it turned out, no one else got a chance at the job for the next 18 years.\u201d<\/p>\n The reason for the job\u2019s unpopularity, Gardner said, was the sheer amount of work involved in producing the Bulletin<\/em>, which had grown to multiple legal-sized sheets. \u201cThe editor had to collect all the news, do most of the writing, do the typing, run off 200 copies on the Xerox machine, collate and staple them, and then stuff the paper into the mailboxes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Becoming a newspaper<\/strong><\/p>\n Four months after Gardner took over, the Lake Monticello Owners\u2019 Association decided it would no longer subsidize the Lake Monticello Newsletter<\/em>, as Gardner now called it, either financially or through use of its typewriter and Xerox machine. Faced with the expense of printing in Charlottesville and loath to ask for donations, Gardner decided to sell advertising in the Newsletter<\/em>to defray its cost.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no trouble getting advertising,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cThe advertisers came to me because advertising in the Newsletter<\/em>was the best and surest way to get their message to the growing population at the Lake.\u201d<\/p>\n The Newsletter<\/em>played an important role in Lake affairs, helping to secure individual mailboxes for homeowners rather than clusters at the gates, and assisting in having Lake roads declared fit for school bus travel.<\/p>\n In 1985 Gardner changed the name of the paper to the Lake Monticello Review<\/em>, joking later that he selected the title because the monthly publication schedule made it impossible to do anything other than \u201creview\u201d the news.<\/p>\n But Gardner made a more important change from the moment he took over: including Fluvanna County news, not just Lake Monticello happenings. After years of reporting on county Board of Supervisors meetings, Gardner decided to adjust the publication\u2019s name yet again to reflect its wider reach. And so, in 1988, the Lake Monticello and Fluvanna County Review<\/em>was born.<\/p>\n Throughout the early years, Gardner relied on volunteers to keep the paper thriving. \u201cMore than 100 volunteers served with me in many roles: typing, advertising, layout, editing, reporting, special columns, bill paying, photography and distribution,\u201d he said. \u201cMy wife, Doris, backed me up on almost all the jobs at the paper at one time or another.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the volunteers received no salary, the money generated by the ads was more than enough to cover the paper\u2019s expenses. So at the end of the year, Gardner would give his volunteers a share of what the paper had made.<\/p>\n Over time, Gardner\u2019s life grew busier. Once a mayor of a small town in Maryland, Gardner felt his political interest return. In 1992 he won election to a seat on the Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n Passing the torch<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cBy 1995 the paper was running 56 pages monthly in magazine format,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cIt had become too big an enterprise to be run by volunteers. The Lake, and Fluvanna County as well, had grown into a significant market. A monthly publication was no longer adequate for news coverage or to serve the needs of the business community. There was so much going on \u2013 if we didn\u2019t go to a weekly paper someone else was going to come in and do it. I was just too busy at that point in time. I was the chair of the Board of Supervisors, and I couldn\u2019t handle a weekly paper. So that\u2019s when I recruited someone else to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Allen, a Lake resident, graphic artist and former newspaper advertising manager, joined the staff in 1995, and when Gardner offered to sell the paper, Allen agreed. He took over as publisher in 1997 while Gardner stayed on as a silent partner.<\/p>\n Now 97 years old, Gardner stays in touch with Fluvanna Review<\/em>staff and still occasionally attends Board of Supervisors meetings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 18 years that I ran the paper were among the most satisfying years of my life,\u201d he said. \u201cI learned on the job how to run a paper. I learned that sometimes it can be difficult and unpopular, but necessary. I learned to stand up for ethical and accurate reporting, to edit out poorly thought-out commentary and unfounded accusations.\u201d<\/p>\n Allen made several changes when he took over, but three stood out with lasting impact. He switched the paper to a tabloid format, which the Review<\/em>still uses today. He began publishing every other week rather than once a month. But most significant of all, he changed the name of the paper one final time: to the Fluvanna Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n Over the next two years, Allen\u2019s responsibilities began to take a toll. \u201cI was getting burned out,\u201d he said in a 2014 interview. \u201cI was the ad salesman, the editor, the designer and the delivery guy.\u201d Plus, he said, he had never seen himself as a lifelong newspaperman. So when an opportunity arose for Allen to go into the computer business with a friend in Lynchburg, he decided to sell the paper.<\/p>\n Dismal days<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1999 Allen sold the Review<\/em>to a man who lived in Martinsville. \u201cHe planned to move up here, but it wasn\u2019t working out,\u201d Allen said. \u201cHe tried to run it from Martinsville.\u201d<\/p>\n The task proved too difficult, and the paper started unraveling. Advertisers grew angry with mistakes in their ads and began dropping out. The Review<\/em>\u2019s situation turned serious. \u201cIt was bankrupt on paper,\u201d Allen said. \u201cIt had more debts than it had assets.\u201d<\/p>\n Allen\u2019s business venture hadn\u2019t worked out, and merely a year after he sold the paper, he decided to return. \u201cI bought it back for $1 and assumed all that debt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Growing the business<\/strong><\/p>\n Allen immediately got to work. \u201cWhen people heard that I had come back, the advertisers who had dropped out jumped back in. I mended fences and put creditors at ease,\u201d he said, noting that Gardner helped significantly by giving the paper a loan to get it out of pressing debt.<\/p>\n Allen\u2019s new philosophy revolved around turning the Review<\/em>from an essentially one-man show into a business. \u201cI started hiring staff,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was the only way it was going to grow, because one person can only do so much. Over time I hired an office manager, a designer, an editor and additional salespeople.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2004 Allen also made the long-anticipated jump into weekly production. \u201cWe needed to be timelier with the news,\u201d he said. \u201cOur competitors at the time were the Central Virginian<\/em>out of Louisa, which had a Fluvanna section, and the Rural Virginian<\/em>, which was mostly Scottsville but had a little Fluvanna news. They were weekly; we weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Fluvanna Review<\/em>grew, Allen kept its mission intact. \u201cWe reported both sides of any hot topic facing the county and let the readers decide,\u201d he said. \u201cWe tried to be unbiased. First and foremost our responsibility was to our readers, and secondly to our advertisers\u2026 We were the one paper that was all Fluvanna, all the time, and we wanted to be the best source of Fluvanna news.\u201d<\/p>\n Monthlies<\/strong><\/p>\n One competitor,the Rural Virginian<\/em>, \u201cstarted coming really hard after us in Fluvanna, trying to compete,\u201d Allen said. \u201cI thought the best defense might be a good offense.\u201d So in 2002 he began the Scottsville Monthly<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Scottsville Monthly<\/em>was literally an overnight success,\u201d he said. \u201cOn my first day selling advertising, I sold enough to cover the first year of expenses. People in Scottsville loved having their own paper.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2003 Allen started another monthly, this time in Buckingham. \u201cBuckingham was the one county in Virginia that didn\u2019t have a newspaper,\u201d Allen said. \u201cSo I started theBuckingham Beacon<\/em>. The people embraced it with open arms.\u201d<\/p>\n Pleased with the success of his two monthlies, Allen looked next to Orange County, and in 2005 started OC Magazine<\/em>. \u201cThere was already a weekly paper there and I didn\u2019t want to compete head-to-head, so we went with more of a magazine feel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Then in 2008 Allen decided to go into Louisa, again using a magazine format for Louisa Life <\/em>so as not to compete with the county\u2019s existing newspaper. Next he looked to Greene County, but the Great Recession halted his plans. \u201cI decided to batten down the hatches and ride it through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n All four monthlies and the Review<\/em>function under Valley Publishing, a company Allen created. While newspapers across the country are being bought up by media conglomerates, Valley Publishing remains a loyal Fluvanna company, located in Crofton Plaza off Lake Monticello Road.<\/p>\n New era<\/strong><\/p>\n As time stretched on, Allen felt the sense of burnout return. \u201cI had been publishing for 12 years,\u201d he said. \u201cMy plan in life was never to be a publisher \u2013 it just kind of happened that way.\u201d He started looking for buyers.<\/p>\n Around the same time, two career newspapermen interested in running a local paper discovered the Fluvanna Review<\/em>and liked what they saw. In 2010 Carlos Santos, a former Richmond Times-Dispatch<\/em>reporter, and Dave Ress, a Newport News Daily Press<\/em>reporter, bought Valley Publishing. Santos took over as publisher and Ress stayed in the background as a silent partner.<\/p>\n One of the first things Santos did was establish a website for the Fluvanna Review<\/em>. \u201cIt was primitive but it allowed us to have a daily newspaper,\u201d Santos said. \u201cThat was big, because suddenly we were competing with the local TV stations.\u201d Over the years Santos upgraded the website, culminating in last year\u2019s launch of a sleeker, more streamlined format that also includes the monthly publications.<\/p>\n Santos, who had 33 years of experience as a reporter when he took over, initially wrote many of the news stories himself, and over time the Fluvanna Review<\/em>developed a hard news edge. He doubled the number of color pages and focused on expanding the paper\u2019s reach throughout the county and into surrounding areas.<\/p>\n Now the five papers together have a monthly circulation of 46,000. The Fluvanna Review<\/em>prints 6,300 copies each week delivered directly to homes at Lake Monticello, Broken Island and Sycamore Square, and available at over 100 key locations throughout Fluvanna, Albemarle, Louisa and Charlottesville.<\/p>\n One of Santos\u2019 more influential decisions was to enter the Fluvanna Review<\/em>into the Virginia Press Association\u2019s (VPA) yearly competition for journalism and newspaper design excellence. While the awards that began accumulating gave the Review<\/em>\u2019s staff a sense of accomplishment, their impact went further than mere validation. The paper\u2019s journalists and designers started pushing themselves to meet a higher standard \u2013 by writing better, digging deeper, asking harder questions, and designing with elegance and creativity.<\/p>\n The Fluvanna Review<\/em>has won 88 VPA awards since 2010 for breaking news writing, investigative journalism, government coverage, column writing, advertising design, news layout, cover illustration and photography.<\/p>\n Looking forward<\/strong><\/p>\n The news world has changed since the Fluvanna Review<\/em>began in 1979. Local news in particular has suffered a tremendous blow, with many communities around the country already finding themselves without reliable, objective information about what\u2019s taking place in their hometown government, schools and law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n Producing a newspaper each week isn\u2019t free. Staff members make modest salaries to support themselves and their families, and the costs of printing, distribution and overhead don\u2019t come cheaply.<\/p>\n Residents who value having a local newspaper \u2013 who appreciate not only the information provided but also the accountability enforced among those in power \u2013 need to speak with their dollars. It is a simple economic reality.<\/p>\n In the case of free newspapers like the Fluvanna Review<\/em>, that means purchasing advertisements rather than asking the paper to make repeated gifts of its time, print space and publicity. Community newspapers like the Review<\/em>do as much as they can to help the myriad worthwhile endeavors throughout their readership areas, but in the end \u2013 just like any other company \u2013 they need money to survive.<\/p>\n Santos reflected on that changing dynamic as he looked ahead to the paper\u2019s future in the Fluvanna community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fluvanna Review<\/em>has covered Fluvanna County news, good and bad, for four decades and we are celebrating that achievement. I\u2019m proud of the paper and how hard our staff works every week to publish a lively, well-designed newspaper that accurately reflects life in the county,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cNo other media covers the county with our breadth and depth in news. No other media offers our reach for businesses that need to advertise.<\/p>\n \u201cNewspapers all over the country are struggling and some are gone. We plan to be around a long time, but in the end it\u2019s the community \u2013 both readers and advertisers \u2013 who make the final decision as to how long. I\u2019m hoping for another 40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Christina Dimeo Editor From simple beginnings as a one-page monthly newsletter for Lake Monticello residents, the Fluvanna Reviewhas grown into a thriving weekly newspaper covering news throughout Fluvanna County. In the years since the first edition was printed in July 1979, the world has changed. While print once dominated the market, now many people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,59,133,132,58,23,138,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-business","category-crime","category-features","category-government","category-latest_news","category-safety","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17897,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17894\/revisions\/17897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fluvannareview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}