Former associate editor remembers newspaper's early days

The Potomac News was young and so were we when my husband signed on as its publisher in 1967.

The paper’s birthday was Sept. 25, the same day Paul turned 37.

We had been reporters at a daily newspaper, The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, when we arrived full of enthusiasm to try to save this struggling little paper.

We were probably a little naïve, too, I think. The first monthly circulation revenue came out at only $169. It seemed the paper had little life left as more bad financial reports came in.

I remember thinking we should have stayed in Fredericksburg. Our old editor there questioned Paul: “Why the Potomac News? It’s the worst paper in the state.”

But Paul and its owner, Dr. A. J. Ferlazzo, had a vision for the paper. At that time, the county was far more split between east and west and, with the Potomac News, the east side would finally have a voice. Even if that voice was then a tiny one.

In 1967, the paper had an un-audited circulation of less than 5,000; when we left in 1984 it was about 25,000 and a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

The early years were hard, when many on the staff, Paul and I included, worked until the early hours of the morning “putting the paper to bed.” Sometimes, if one of our young kids were there, they’d fall asleep on the large newsprint rolls.

After all-night shifts on Wednesday night, many left for an early breakfast at Art and Mary’s restaurant over the hill in Triangle, not far from the tiny plant in Triangle Plaza Shopping Center, where the newsroom and press were right next to each other.

You couldn’t talk on the phone when the press was running because of the noise. At least one staffer, I believe the sports editor, threatened to walk out or throw his typewriter out the window, maybe both, because of the working conditions.

When it was a small weekly, everyone had more than one job to do. Paul not only managed the paper, but wrote the editorials, news stories, took and developed pictures, typed copy, laid out the paper and even sold some advertising.

As associate editor, I wrote feature stories, a weekly column, “Just Musing,” took photos, oversaw the lifestyle and food pages and was the police reporter.

I had written a story about a moonshine still at Cherry Hill and a caller called in to say he didn’t like the story being in the paper. The next morning, we arrived to find all the paper’s front windows smashed and a telling baseball bat left behind.

In 1972 Hurricane Agnes paid a visit and we came out with an EXTRA edition including six pages of pictures. The entire staff worked day and night putting it together. It caused $18 million in damages to the county, said to be Prince William’s worst damage since the Civil War. Hardest hit was the town of Occoquan, where caskets from the funeral home and boats from the marina floated down Mill Street.

Among those pictured were the hundreds of volunteers from the new communities in Lake Ridge and Dale City marching into town with shovels and picks to clean up the flood waters in homes and businesses. The paper printed free advertisements for the local merchants to communicate with their customers.

It was around 1972 that the paper went twice-weekly as the county was quickly growing and we were trying to keep up. I remember the paper’s founder, Francis Coffey, was there to pull that first Friday paper off the press.

“It’ll never work out,” he said, thinking twice a week was just too much for the ol’ Pot News.

But work it did and with “sink or swim” as its motto the paper went daily. Paul and Dr. Ferlazzo agreed the paper’s capital needs were too great and, as the county and the paper continued to grow, they went looking for a buyer.

They found one in Worrell Newspapers. The chain quickly bought a new color press for the paper and built a new large building on Smoketown Road.

Around 1979, in deep secrecy, and in the dead of night, our pressmen helped out the Washington Post by printing some of their papers while their own pressmen were on strike. County policemen stood by in readiness in case there was trouble.

I guess news travels fast and far, because not much later we were in contact with The Times of London, whose paper was also shut down by strikers. Soon men in proper grey suits, talking of “lorries” and “trolleys” and the pound sterling were in our building.

We were to weekly print, at night, 70,000 copies of the Times. Everything was hush, hush, because earlier plans to publish in Frankfurt, Germany, were canceled when word was leaked to the international trade union. Tons of newsprint was ordered; special typesetting equipment, with the pound symbol, was ordered; lots of typists were on standby, and then word came from London that the deal was off, the strike was settled and the paper would be printed — in London.

The Potomac News was reimbursed and we did get a nice painting from The Times of London with a note to “Paul Muse for help generously given.”

Through it all, the paper had a young and dedicated staff. Some of those early members were Glenn Jesse, Lester Lauber, Charlie Hines, Mary Scites, Eileen Mead, Donald Atkins, Robert Alexander and Boyd Watson.

Paul Lewis’ photo of the bridge collapse in Occoquan took national honors. His father, Frank Lewis, was also our cartoonist and is still a cartoonist for the paper today.

So many wonderful staffers, too numerous to mention here, were on the paper through the years we were there and helped to win its many awards from the prestigious Copeland Awards to awards by the Virginia Press Association given to outstanding writers and outstanding papers.

Paul left the Potomac News in 1984 to become a vice president of Worrell Newspapers at its headquarters in Charlottesville. He died in May 2000. I have remarried and live in Sun City, Ariz., with husband, David Shapiro, a novelist.

I see the paper is now the News & Messenger.

Paul and I got our start in the newspaper business at the Manassas Messenger, which was started by his father, Benjamin Muse. It merged with the Manassas Journal in 1951. So, in some ways, it’s all back where it started.