ThisWeek Tri-Village News Ceases Production, Ending Publication of Moment in Time
Moment in Time History
By Wayne Carlson, Emeritus Board Member and Moment in Time Author
In 1996, Tom DeMaria and I engaged in a conversation about Tom’s experience with the Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff Historical Society. The Society started in 1974, and had been doing an reasonable job of collecting and documenting the rich history of the Tri-Village area. However, aside from the publication of several manuscripts, there had been little dissemination of the content of their historical collection and activities, particularly beyond the Society membership. DeMaria, who was serving as a board member at the time, invited me to address the board about some emerging technologies (such as digital scanning, rich integrated databases, presentation software, and most importantly, the World Wide Web) that could be utilized to reach the entire community and beyond.
As a result of that presentation, I was invited to join the board as a technology “expert.” Several members helped with the daunting task of digitizing photos, newspaper articles, and other documents in the Society’s collection, with the goal of making the digital content accessible. At the same time, I designed and programmed a website that would allow anyone, anywhere, to use a web browser to search and view this content. The site was made public in early 1999, as described in our Spring 1999 Society newsletter (https://ghmchs2.org/PDFs/Sp99newsletter/viewpoints1.PDF)
The next several years saw the members of the board working diligently to expand our collection of historical artifacts and documents, while realizing our goals of digitizing and enhanced dissemination. Board member Win Keller launched a project of interviewing long time residents; researchers on the board, notably DeMaria, Pat Mooney, and Terry Smith, searched resources at the Columbus Metropolitan Library and the Ohio Historical Society (and many other locations) to uncover historical references to the community; DeMaria started a sub-collection that he called “New Discoveries” focused on found material, that we featured on the website; Tom and I made multiple presentations to community members and organizations using this new digital collection; and we made good headway with the task of scanning and storing our existing collection.
Our activities sparked an interest from a reporter for the Tri-Village News (later called Grandview ThisWeek), Alan Froman, who has covered the Grandview Heights and Marble Cliff communities for many years. He was very happy with the increased availability of material for articles that he wrote. In late 2003, Froman and I were talking after an interview about the Society’s upcoming Mother’s Day home tour and he was really interested in how he could publicize our online activities, particularly the “New Discoveries” effort, on a continuing basis. I suggested that perhaps I could write an occasional article for his paper that would feature an image from our collection along with a short paragraph that would provide historical context. He took the idea to his editor, who was excited about it. They suggested that the paper would reserve space every week for our article beginning in early spring.
This image is from the Society’s first MIT published in the local newspaper Tri-Village News on March 29, 2004.
On March 29th of 2004 our first article was published, featuring the home of early Grandview resident Julius Stone, which had been razed to develop Stonegate Village at the top of the hill on Westwood Avenue. We chose to call the weekly article Moment In Time, or MIT. Over the next 8 years or so, the MIT was the research and writing effort of myself and Tom DeMaria, and we published continuously every week. Starting in 2012 or 2013, Win Keller and Sally Kosnik and some other board members also contributed content until Win’s death in 2015.
Sometime after the Columbus Dispatch, who owned the ThisWeek neighborhood newspapers, sold to the New Media Investment Group, the paper “co-opted” our Moment in Time name and started publishing greater Columbus articles under the heading, so we retitled ours as Grandview Heights Moment in Time.
Over the years the MIT articles focused on historic Tri-Village houses, local government buildings, schools and churches, as well as influential people, businesses and organizations. We featured local activities and traditions, and world events that influenced our communities. We honored local luminaries that passed away, including several from our own board.
Early in 2021, the Society joined efforts with the Grandview Heights Public Library to archive the MITs and other material in a collection overseen by the library, which is accessible from the Society and library websites (https://www.ghmchs.org/moment-in-time and https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/search/searchterm/Moment%20in%20time/order/nosort). Soon after, we moved from a weekly to a biweekly article schedule.
Now, after 19 years of continuous MIT publications in Grandview ThisWeek News, the newspaper is shuttering the paper. The MIT will likely continue on an occasional basis.
NOTE: As reported in the January 5, 2023 This Week Tri-Village News - “In an effort to focus reporting resources on The Columbus Dispatch and Dispatch.com, ThisWeek Tri-Village News will cease publication, both in print and online, effective Jan. 26. All other ThisWeek Community News editions also will close at that time.”
