The Groundhog Hibernates
We saw our shadow. Unfortunately, that means you get six weeks of a Groundhog-free winter
Poughkeepsie is more than a punchline.
Oh sure, it has a funny name, and it’s just far enough from New York City that New Yorkers can make fun of it, but it’s still a destination on the departure boards at Grand Central, so those same New Yorkers know what it is. And it’s a town that has been through a lot in the last half century—the departure of manufacturing jobs and the hollowing out of its urban core—but it’s a place with a history and a real soul and Vassar College and IBM and Marist College, and the FDR Library and the Culinary Institute are just up the road and there’s food and beer and live theater.
And quidditch. There’s quidditch.
The Groundhog has rooted up all of these stories between its launch this fall and its winter hiatus. As the editor of The Groundhog, I am extremely proud of the work that the students in COM 461: News Workshop at Marist College have done. We have had strange and funny stories. We have done serious, investigative stories. We wrote about The Poughkeepsie Journal, about the divide between the Town of Poughkeepsie and the City of Poughkeepsie. We wrote about the city’s finances and homelessness and restaurant development and public transportation. We wrote about coffee and roller derby and baseball and basketball. We wrote about Falcone, the police dog. But we never did figure out where, exactly to catch the bus.
We did a lot. But there is more to do. When the spring semester begins, a new batch of baby groundhogs will populate this site, bringing you even more news about the Queen City of the Hudson. About PoTown. Here are some of the topics that the outgoing groundhogs suggested we still have to write about:
- Follow up on the bus story
- Poughkeepsie finances
- Why not a college town?
- 400 non-profits in Poughkeepsie alone
- Middle Main, underwear factory, cafe, loft
- Housing
- Asylum development
- Different formats (video, audio)
- Homelessness follow-up; transforming part of underwear factory into rented studios for spaces, by day
- Rotate through topics
- Different styles: Listicles, photo essays, narrative journalism
- Find go-to sources
- Hudson River Housing
- Molly Katz
- Spackenkill area
- Housing projects
- IBM
- Vassar Brothers Hospital
Finally, the staff of the Groundhog has advice not just for those baby groundhogs, but for you, dear Poughkeepsian:
Go outside your comfort zone. There’s a lot more going on in Poughkeepsie than you think.
We will re-emerge around Groundhog Day. Until then, the homepage of the Groundhog will be populated with some of our best and favorite stories, as chosen by the staff and by me.
See you then.
