SETH EFFRON: From the start Dennis Rogers connected news, communities and people – WRAL.com

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column is by Seth Effron, opinion editor for Capitol Broadcasting Company. Dennis Rogers, a columnist for the News & Observer of Raleigh more more than 30 years, died Saturday. He was 77 years old.

I knew Dennis Rogers before Dennis Rogers was a clich. He spent better than 30 years at Raleighs News & Observer writing columns that documented the life and times of people and places mostly in eastern North Carolina.

But his first full-time reporting job was in Fayetteville. Dennis was among the original staffers that launched The Fayetteville Times 47 years ago this July (In 1990 The Times was merged with its sister newspaper The Fayetteville Observer). I joined The Times right out of school, 11 months later.

Dennis was fresh out of college though he had life experience that far exceeded most of the reporting staff. Hed spent eight years in the Army including service in Vietnam after which he got a journalism degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.

The new paper had a small and mostly young staff. There was a lot of undeveloped talent and Dennis was the writer much of the staff looked to. It wasnt just how he wrote but it was his approach to reporting that influenced those around him. His approach to news to tell stories, describe events, profile people was aimed at connecting with readers. Dennis didnt write as if his words were being handed down from on high. He wasnt looking to impress community leaders or big-shot office holders.

Dennis wanted EVERY person who picked up The Fayetteville Times and read his reporting, to feel as if he were talking directly to them, in ways that connected with their lives and experiences.

Among his beats, was covering the military service most specifically Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base. They were, and remain, the towns biggest business. Particularly in the years during the Vietnam War, the military installations and the people who were stationed on them influenced nearly every aspect of life.

The afternoon newspaper, the long-established Fayetteville Observer, covered Fort Bragg and the soldiers, as a corporate entity. What was the latest official pronouncement, what was being pushed by the public information operation that was the news on the military that dominated in the Observer.

In a hotly competitive news environment, Dennis had a different approach and it influenced the way other Fayetteville Times reporters covered other beats.

Dennis, correctly, saw Fort Bragg as a community, not a business. It wasnt just the generals and colonels that mattered.

It was the enlisted soldiers and lower-ranking officers and their families. What was going on in their lives? How did military service and life in the Fayetteville area affect them and their children? What ways beyond the GIs cruising the bars and clubs on Hay Street; the used-car and mobile home lots along Bragg Boulevard; the court docket did these people contribute to the community and what impact did Fayetteville have on their lives.

Dennis had that touch from the beginning. His influence spread to others and became a hallmark of the distinct way The Fayetteville Times covered the news from the city hall and the courthouse to the schools and business community.

So, before Dennis Rogers, became the Dennis Rogers who earned such strong affection from readers of The News & Observer, he was a colleague who helped an entire newspaper frame the way it covered and talked about its community.

It is a legacy for those fortunate enough to have worked with him in the early days of a career that lives on in our work each day.

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SETH EFFRON: From the start Dennis Rogers connected news, communities and people - WRAL.com