How My Favorite Actress Came to Hike with Us During September’s Full Moon

Part One

The stately Newburyport Daily News was founded in 1887. Their stodgy elders and editors looked down on my little bi-weekly, The Undertoad, founded in 1996. But they were literally and figuratively old news by the time the ‘Toad came around.

It’s why I began publishing my journal. Their editors and reporters were lazy and predictable, and they’d been the lone game in town for so long that they sat and waited for news to come to them.

I was clueless about newspapering, so I walked the streets and talked to people in that provincial little city along the Merrimack River. It worked. Stories revealed themselves and my paper took flight. And every chance I got, I tweaked, teased, and tormented the old, slow-footed behemoth.

Rarely did the reporters leave the building on Liberty Street, other than a daily walk to city hall or to get take-out lunch somewhere along State Street or Pleasant Street.

The closest the Daily News came to being whimsical was a tiny two or three bullet points at the bott…