Ten Years ago this past week I took a big, scary step and ventured out on my own to become my own boss and opened the Orangectlive website.
Often people ask me what area of Orange do I live in — and they most are surprised when I tell them that I am a Milford girl born and raised, it’s where I live and it’s where I’ll die.
“So, why Orange?”
I began my journalism career at Hometown Publications 1,000 years ago as a staff writer for the Huntington Herald and was promoted to Editor of the Amity Observer, covering Bethany, Orange and Woodbridge when the position opened up. I loved the Observer and became a staple in the tri-towns. On holidays I’d take backroads and zoom from town to town to make sure I had coverage from each and every Veteran’s Day ceremony or Memorial Day parade. Somehow, in my early 30s I had the energy to hit every town for photos and get results for municipal Elections and important volunteer fire department events in person. I stayed with the company for more than 15 years.
I was courted by a new online news outlet that promised hyper local coverage of each town. During my interview, I was offered Milford, Orange or Stratford and although I live in Milford, I’d worked in Orange for well over a decade and knew more about the town and all of the important people than anywhere else.
I accepted the Orange editor’s position for many reasons. The pay was better and the perks — well, beyond stellar healthcare, a pay raise and the total trust from my awesome new managing editor that I could handle the job without him hovering, along with the promise of unlimited freelance writers and photographers if I needed them.
I had enough when the business went from “hyper local” news coverage that I’d been hired to do, every initial promise was broken and the powers that be demanded that its editors steal stories from other news sources on a daily basis and link these stories, often from other towns, to our local sites. I refused to do it and was fired for insubordination with less than 2 years on the job.
Since I saw the writing on the wall, I had planned on starting my own site for a while. The Facebook page came first. Within minutes fo the deed, readers caught wind of the firing and spread the word and the very night that I was “freed” from the evil empire, I had attracted more than a thousand followers from my previous job’s Facebook page. It made a nice transition into the news that the Orange Live news site would be opening by the weekend
Introducing Orange Live
The very weekend that Orange Live was set to launch, the Boy Scouts were hosting ConnJam at the Orange Fairgrounds. I brought my well-behaved 7-month-old puppy Mi Sun with me and began taking in every aspect of the event. Then suddenly sirens, emergency personnel and chaos took center stage.
A microburst descended on the fairgrounds,This sudden powerful downward gust of wind brought a tent filled with dozens of people crashing to the ground leaving gnarled metal poles and torn canvas in its place, injuring 10 people (at least one of them a scout) and sending six to the hospital. There were thousands of well-trained Scouts to help handle the emergency, and they did so seamlessly. (I wonder how many of these scouts went on to become police officers or EMTs).
Other events that occurred right after Orange Live debuted:
May 26,2012, The Spartans Baseball team was named the 2012 SCC Champions after defeating Shelton 2-1.
May 31, 2012, the Amity Film Festival still existed and I was asked to judge the competition as I had in past years. So much talent out of Amity. I really miss this featured event.
Strokes Change Everything
I mentioned earlier that I could accomplish just about anything in my 30s. But as we get older most of us lose a little steam.. I was still hitting the streets and covering 3 towns in my early 50s without any sign of slowing down.
One day in 2009, while still at the Amity Observer, I had the first of three strokes. It came out of the blue and really kicked my butt. Within 6 months I’d had two more strokes and finally brain surgery to take care of a collapsed artery.
These strokes took not only a lot of my energy, but along with them the skill to write a compelling story and most of my comprehension ability. Even now, I forget a lot of simple things within moments of taking on a task. (I’ve gone to the grocery store 4 times this week for sugar to make nectar for the hummingbird feeders and still don’t have any sugar in the house) Even if I write it down, it does no good because I lose the note.
I was a workaholic during the “evil empire days” and tried to keep up the momentum when I launched Orange Live. But things changed. People in important positions changed as did my relationships. Computers got viruses as did the world and the way we went about our days changed too.
Friends and longtime town contacts passed away and that put longtime favorite subjects in a different light as well.
Orange Live is a lot different now than it was 10 years ago, access to information via a scanner has changed and a quick quote for a story by a making a phone call to a trusted friend or two has become a thing of the past.
Still, I’ve revamped the Orange Live webpage and renewed the domain name so, even though I still don’t get paid to offer you whatever you see here on the site, I’m not going anywhere.
Thank You for being with me for the last 10 years and here’s to another 10 or as long as I’m still standing.