Lea Ann Butcher takes a call at the front desk of The Wells Inn in Sistersville, W.Va. in between writing a story.
SISTERSVILLE, W.Va. – The newsroom of The INNformer is a place of keyboard clicking as stories take shape for the next issue. It is where locals stop by to chat up publisher-owner Charles Winslow, dropping morsels of news about the town of some 1,300 people hugging the Ohio River.
Eventually, the phone rings and the reporter at the keyboard answers.
“Thank you for calling The Wells Inn,” says Lea Ann Butcher, 23.
As fast as Clark Kent spinning into Superman, the reporter becomes a front desk clerk, the newsroom a hotel lobby.
While reporters fret over getting facts right and making deadlines, the staff at The INNformer has to worry about keys and keeping guests happy, too.
For U.S. print journalists, in an industry riven by layoffs and all manner of indignities (no pay during a furlough week! No more free newsroom coffee!), this may seem like a new low.
Instead, it is a bi-monthly miracle.
Winslow is a 49-year-old, brutally direct transplant from New York State. In 2010, he and his wife, Kim, bought The Wells Inn. The paper published its first issue last January.
It all started with a hotel flier delivered door-to-door….
