By Jock Lauterer
Carrboro Commons Advisor

Dear Carrboro…

Like many projects, The Carrboro Commons is the result of collaboration and teamwork. And I would add, The Commons is its own community — a community of scholars.
For the Community Journalism class that produces the content for the Carrboro Commons is only one part of the equation. Where would we be without assistant professor Andy Bechtel’s Advanced Editing class?

Monday of each production week, my kids e-mail their story/photo packages to Andy’s editors. On Tuesday afternoons, they craft the work into not just solid copy, but also printable PDF files, which make for easier hand-held reading for users.
Then, on Tuesday evenings during production week, Andy’s class returns the edited copy and photos to my kids, who meet the following day and post their work into the Commons.
While it may not sound like rocket science, in academe, it’s pretty unusual for two production classes to team up in such close dependency.
But it’s working, and Andy and I are convinced that the collaborative project and the interclass relationship enriches both of our classrooms-turned-newsrooms with a healthy shot of sweaty-palmed reality. And what’s more, it’s fun.
You can learn more about Andy’s students in the ABOUT link located above the Commons nameplate and in the .pdf version of this issue.
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And speaking of the nameplate (also called a “flag”), the design is the creation of Elsa Hasenzahl, a sophomore journalism major from Charlotte. Elsa’s distinctive tree logo won out over about 30 other proposed designs. Here’s what she had to say about how she came up with the winner:
“I wrote down about 20 adjectives that described Carrboro, in my mind at least, and then just designed flag after flag to get my ideas on paper (I don’t know if you remember, but the sheet I turned in with the flag had about 10-15 ideas on it). Then I tried to visualize Carrboro, and in Weaver Street Market there are some really great canopy-like trees that people always sit underneath when the weather gets warmer, so it’s partially representative of that, and as well of the natural/organic/tree lover/hippy vibe found in Carrboro. From all my ideas, this was my favorite, so I’m glad that the last Carrboro Commons team decided it was theirs too.”
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The team concept — actually a culture of community — has been central to the growth of the Carrboro Commons. Even the name was the result of one student’s inspiration. Jack Carley, came up with the name, the Carrboro Commons, and here’s his take on how it came about last fall:

“ I think the name came from the idea that we were making a community-centric newspaper. The idea of a “commons” or a place where everyone could be together and talk calls to mind the idea of an older, quainter involved democracy and close-knit commmunity. I think Carrboro actually approaches something like that more than most other places could hope to. There is a sense of community in Carrboro, and I think the Commons is there to help nurture that as best we can. That, and it’s alliterative.”
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As a kid growing up in Chapel Hill in the ’50s, Carrboro was off-limits. My family, like many University-employed Chapel Hillians, looked down on the seedy former mill town as blue-collar, low-class and uneducated.
My mom wouldn’t let me ride my bike past where Padgett Station is now, at the intersection of Rosemary and West Franklin. Of course, that was nothing but outright Chapel Hill snobbery and classism, for I went to high school with a bunch of fine “Carrboro Kids,” — as we called our classmates from West End ¬— all from old-line local families whose names you’ll recognize today: the Sparrows, Cheeks, Wombles, Lloyds and Madrys, to name a few.
While you’ll still find those names in the local phone book, I wonder how those old-line Carrboro natives feel about the “new Carrboro.” For how the place has changed since my childhood!
After college, I went to the mountains and helped start and run a pair of community newspapers in western North Carolina. After 15 years of 24/7/365, I was ready for something new — and teaching beckoned.
After a brief stint as a part-timer at UNC in the early ’80s, I taught for five years at Brevard College and 10 more at Penn State.
So when I returned “home” in 2000, imagine my surprise to find that Carrboro had not only become “the Paris of the Piedmont,” but had even grown weary of the label.
I had missed Nyle Frank and the first Carrboro newspaper, his “Carrboro Caterpillar.” I missed the birth and growth of Weaver Street Market. I missed the transformation from hick to hip, from country to cool.
I had to get totally re-acquainted. And for good reason. My wife and I had chosen to build just outside town, in what I call “Greater Carrboro.” So I had better get to know my new/old hometown. Even more now that I advise a media outlet that is attempting to be, in the words of Charles Kuralt, “relentlessly local.”
And I am not alone on this adventure into community. My student writers/photographers/podcasters are similarly in explorer mode. If you go to the ABOUT link above our homepage nameplate and click on the individual mugshots of the staffers, you will find that many have attempted to put in words their early perceptions of Carrboro. It makes for fascinating reading.