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Every month, InMaricopa magazine features stories about the people of our city.

I’ve lived in Maricopa for nine days.

But I’ve been around the block. As a journalist.

I came here from Pennsylvania for an opportunity to return to my professional roots: hyperlocal news.

My first job out of college (not counting the three shifts I lasted unloading trucks for UPS in the middle of the night) was for a weekly newspaper in Hatboro, Pa., a small town just over one mile square. Population: about 7,500. Then and now.

About 25 minutes north of Philadelphia, the village was settled by an English hatter in the early 1700s. Revolutionary War soldiers came there to get their headwear.

In the late 1980s, I found the borough a welcoming place. I loved its history, and the people were kind and generous, with a strong sense of community. They loved and supported my newspaper, Today’s Spirit, the name a holdover from earlier days as a daily newspaper.

They appreciated our coverage because it started with chicken dinners and Girl Scout cookie sales. Plus comprehensive coverage of town councils and school boards. And honor rolls.

It was the kind of place where readers could stroll in off the sidewalk and tell you why your account of a council meeting only told half the story. Or congratulate you for your fairness on an important community issue. It was the kind of place where I could be heard as a young editor setting up photo assignments, asking, “And what time will the Easter Bunny be arriving?”

Our Wednesday publication was literally part of the town’s fabric. And had been for more than 100 years. When I arrived, it was in the care of a wonderful editor, who took this green journalism grad and shared everything she knew about community journalism. She was innately qualified for the role: she lived, worked and shopped in town, her husband coached Little League for years, her children attended the schools. Her greatest skill? She listened. No matter who you were in town. It informed everything she did as editor.

She groomed me to replace her, but there really was no replacing her. Though I did succeed her. All told, I spent seven years at the Spirit. It was the best job I never knew I had.

I eventually moved onto daily newspapers, including two big city newspapers. But I never forgot that little newsroom and all I learned there, even as hyperlocal journalism came and went in many newsrooms, a failed business experiment deemed too expensive.

Fast forward to earlier this year, when the owners of InMaricopa.com found me in the Philadelphia suburbs, still looking for a job months after I was laid off from a digital news site in the city. When I learned about their company – and the core values which every day shapes its mission to serve readers and advertisers where it counts – I knew this was my big chance to return to real community news with people who understood its value and had remained committed to it for 16 years. (I didn’t quite realize at the time that my opportunity to join the company as the new associate publisher would come in time to help cover the biggest news story since World War II.)

The coronavirus pandemic – and its effect on the Maricopa community – has been Job One for our tiny newsroom for weeks. Life has changed dramatically almost overnight – and for long into the future, maybe forever. From kitchen tables and home offices, we are committed to making sure you are informed, safe and prepared. In recent weeks, we have written dozens of stories: from breaking the latest school-related developments to the eye-opening account of a fellow Maricopan’s horrible ordeal with the virus to inspiring tales of a community coming together to care for each other at this difficult time.

To that end, we have joined arms with a national foundation to enlist your support to bolster our coverage during this life-altering crisis.

The Local Media Association and its foundation is helping independent and family-owned organizations at a time when the pandemic is shaking the already-shaky economic foundations of the news industry. Nearly every day it seems more newspapers and digital news sites are closing down or scaling back print schedules. Hundreds and hundreds of news staffers nationwide have lost their jobs since the onset of the virus. Others have been furloughed or their pay slashed.

InMaricopa.com wants to be here for you, for another 16 years and longer. If you read our free monthly magazine and check out our online site, please consider making a donation.

I came here – more than 2,000 miles – because I could see that Maricopans have a local news organization that genuinely cares about them and works hard on their behalf every day. It’s a fairly rare thing these days and I wanted to be a part of it.

I hope you do, too.

We ask our readers to help with a tax-deductible donation at InMaricopa.com/LocalCoverage and thank those who have already contributed.