Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: The arrow still points to news

When I joined the Ledger-Enquirer 13 years ago, it wasn't because of the building.

I moved here from Tennessee because of a film I saw about Columbus that showed people using household mops to brush barbecue sauce onto pork shoulders.

That's what I tell people.

But I also moved here because nearly everybody was genuinely friendly, it seemed like a good place to raise a family, and it was without a doubt a good place to cover the news.

It was also home. I'd grown up in LaFayette, Ala., about 45 minutes from here. Columbus was the big city where my parents took me to eat seafood, watch movies and hear stories about the grandparents I'd never met.

And the Ledger-Enquirer was my Sunday newspaper.

When I interviewed here right after 9/11, I thought the newspaper building was big and beautiful, and you could feel its importance.

But most of all, it housed a lot of interesting, creative people who'd had a chance to leave for bigger cities and bigger newspapers but never did.

Not that I planned to stick around. Since graduating from college 11 years earlier, I'd moved seven times. I'd lived in some great places, including Germany, Athens, Ga., and the Arizona desert.

Somehow, I never minded moving on. Journalists are like that, I suppose. We're curious, anxious to commit, and then even quicker to adapt. When we leave a town, we write a teary farewell to the greatest place ever and then a few days later we're writing about how our new home seems so much better than our last.

But a funny thing happened. I woke up today and realized that more than a decade has passed and I'm still here, and I think that's because I love the place where I live, and the work that I do, and my colleagues and the people I cover and the stories we get to tell.

I'm fond of the big old building, but not nearly as much as the Ledger or Enquirer veterans and former employees who talk about the way things used to be. They remember the lady who polished the same brass handrail every morning, and the giant terminal where they'd stand in line waiting to type their stories.

They also talk about the excitement and fast pace of covering breaking news in a growing city. They talk about it almost like it's a thing of the past.

It is not.

On Monday, we begin a new era down the street in a sleek new digital workspace in the Hardaway Building at 945 Broadway.

I'll take with me fond memories, but I won't miss the old 12th Street building -- or the brass handrails -- a bit.

It's a different world.

Instead of one daily deadline, we now cover and produce stories around the clock for what was at last count five different platforms: newspaper, website, mobile, tablet and social media.

Instead of typing our

stories into a terminal and then watching an army of production people put it on the page, a journalist now publishes his or her stories, photographs and videos instantaneously online using a smartphone or iPad.

But some things haven't changed. Our newsroom -- wherever it happens to be -- has the same heart, soul and energy of those great journalists who went before us.

Now our stately old building belongs to Columbus State University, but the old weather vane will remain atop the roof. And if you look up there, you'll notice the news arrow pointing south, toward our new home.

Come see us.

Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, executive editor, dkholmes@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published January 30, 2015 at 11:15 PM with the headline "Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: The arrow still points to news."