Hello again, Mercury readers.

I’m halfway through the first week of my new role as lead editor here but I’m not new to the Mercury at all. I first met you in 2018, when I began contributing reports and columns as a freelancer.

‘Obligated to do what’s right:’ State money helping maintain more historic African-American cemeteries

Some of the best work of my career I wrote on assignment for the Mercury, then under the leadership of Robert Zullo. I chronicled the plight of Black farmers in Virginia who faced discrimination from the federal government, and investigated the state’s disproportionate maternal mortality rates. I appreciated the chance to write about environmental justice issues around the state, like the implications of a planned landfill in Cumberland, for example, and why alumni of a Rosenwald school within the area’s historic Black community objected to the facility. 

My relationship with the Mercury gave me the chance to make connections with communities that still inform my work and understanding of the state’s dynamics. I met members of the Union Hill community who were waging an all-out war against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and tried to show the yearslong, statewide pattern of economic development at the expense of communities like the one I grew up in, where most people are Black, working class, good-hearted but tired of industry encroaching on them. 

“They are putting this [compressor station] in this neighborhood because we are black,” I remember Ms. Ella Rose telling me when I was reporting on Union Hill for the Mercury back then.

State board will decide permit for Buckingham compressor station, focus of Virginia’s biggest environmental justice debate

She was anxious thinking the pipeline’s compressor station would excise her “bear friend” and other animals from the woods surrounding her home. She and other residents asked hard questions — namely, why was it OK to put the compressor in a historic Black neighborhood but not in an affluent white one? — that I couldn’t answer. But I did ask decision makers to answer those inquiries; that kind of accountability seeking is an essential point of local journalism and remains one of my top goals as a journalist. 

I am and have always been interested in the problems and possibilities in Virginia. In why things are the way they are politically and culturally in this Southern state, a bedrock of American history that’s slowly transformed from red to purple to blue, reflecting the shifting sensibilities of its citizens. My freelance columns for the Mercury, and the ones I wrote after becoming deputy/commentary editor here last year, often explored the ways our past influences our present. You’ve got to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going. I bring that same curiosity to my new role, continuing in the tradition of my predecessors Zullo and Sarah Vogelsong.

The Indian Child Welfare Act is a cornerstone of Virginia tribal sovereignty

The Mercury’s journalists — politics/senior reporter Graham Moomaw, environment/energy reporter Charlie Paullin, education/transportation reporter Nathaniel Cline and a slate of freelance contributors like Meghan McIntyre — are a talented and tenacious bunch. I intend to keep supporting their rigorous reporting on state policies that shape Virginians’ lives. 

In many ways, Virginia is a bellwether of progressive ideals. We enacted the first “democratically elected legislative body” in the New World. We elected the country’s first Black governor. We offer the most access to abortion of all the Southern states. 

As the state’s identity continues its evolution, I am grateful for the opportunity to lead our team in meeting our mission: giving Virginians a new look at the Old Dominion.

If there are issues you think our reporting should address or voices that we need to hear, please write to me: [email protected]. Thank you for reading the Virginia Mercury.