How Daymond Steer helps tell small town stories that may otherwise go untold

By Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart, Laconia Daily Sun

On this episode of The Granite Beat hosts Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart speak with Daymond Steer, a general assignment reporter widely recognized and honored in New England, who covers the Mount Washington Valley for the Conway Daily Sun. His unique position allows him to shed light onto the happenings of various small towns in the Valley, telling stories – both critical and lighthearted – that would otherwise go untold. 

This transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Adam Drapcho:

We've seen all sorts of news stories published under your byline. I'd like to ask you about a couple of recent ones. The first involved a wayward farm animal. Could you tell us about that story?

Daymond Steer:

The Jackson police chief had the occasion to persuade a pig to get off a cross country ski trail, and he took pictures and posted them to Facebook. I saw the pictures and I said, “Hey Chief, can you explain to me?” He found this pig where the reporting party said it would be and tried to lure it off with an apple from his lunch. The pig was cooperative until he tried to put a leash on it. The pig then resisted, and so he decided to take a different strategy, somehow got some grain and pig feed, and got the pig to follow him back to where it was supposed to be.

Adam Drapcho:

Can you bring us up to speed about your story regarding how the town of Conway is working to redefine the term “dwelling unit” as it sits in their zoning regulations?

Daymond Steer:

A dwelling unit is basically a house or an apartment – it's got the living, sleeping, eating, cooking, sanitation, all under one roof, and they're changing the definition of that. To backup, the town of Conway tried to sue a short-term rental owner saying that its zoning prohibited short-term rentals. They went to court, and Conway lost because of their definition of “dwelling unit”. So now the planning board is changing that definition, which could have some consequences in terms of who's allowed to live where and what you're allowed to do with your property. And that's kind of a fundamental thing in New Hampshire.

Adam Drapcho:

So you have one story about a police chief chasing down a pig, and then you have this other story about redefining terms within a town's zoning regulations. One is more appealing, but the other actually has some bearing on the daily lives of your readers. How do you tell the second story in a way that's informative and straightforward, yet also compelling?

Daymond Steer:

The way you lead off the story is, what's the first thing you tell your mother about any topic? So my mother is a busy lady, as I'm sure your mother probably is too, and what do you want to communicate in a short amount of time? That's your lead, and then you backfill from there.

Adam Drapcho:

It's worth noting that, without the Conway Daily Sun present in the valley, the dwelling unit story would largely be happening in the dark – there wouldn't be any other outlet that I imagine that cares enough to cover how the town defines a dwelling unit in Conway. In many towns, particularly the northern half of the state, there isn't a local reporter assigned to them. Do you have any thoughts on what is lost for communities that don't have a local journalist, and any thoughts about what we might be able to do to fill those holes?

Daymond Steer:

Some towns have people going around filming them, so if I didn't exist you could get the same information by watching hours and hours of Valley Vision. But I do it so you don't have to. And some smaller towns, we have a guy from GovernmentOversight.com that films things, and that's a great resource for me. But I like to think of myself as the guy who sits through the meeting so you don't have to, and I tried to keep an eye on the little towns as well. Some of them don't have any coverage. Some of them had email groups that would email out sort of what happened at the meetings, but I think that's petered out in some places. So there are alternatives, but I guess I give a Reader's Digest version of what happens. I try to do it on a fairly broad scale, doing a lot of different towns, doing a little bit on each one. We're focusing on Conway and also the courts because the courts would be fascinating for someone to have like a Court TV channel. Again, you'd have to watch hours and hours and hours to get to the really interesting stuff, but I try to focus on things that will really affect people's lives.

Julie Hart:

What’s it like to be one of the only journalists covering that area of the state? What kind of resources do you reach out to if you need to bounce ideas off or find sources? What other challenges might you be facing up there?

Daymond Steer:

Well, it's early deadlines, and just getting people to call you back by the deadline is the hardest thing. A lot of times it's just going to the meeting and trying to type it up as fast as you can so you can get to the next thing. That's really what it is. As far as sources, most people are pretty friendly and a lot of my sources are good and get back to me all the time. A lot of it is just having the energy to keep going because sometimes you'll be out in meetings until 10 o'clock, but then get up at seven to start writing. And that's kind of the toughest part. But I prefer being in a low density environment because I don't really like traffic, I don't really like concrete, I don't really like cities. I like trees and people, so I'm good up here.

Adam Drapcho:

You've made a point for years of pressing politicians as they come through New Hampshire about UFO sightings and other such unexplained activities. We've suddenly seen a bunch of information get released about this that really substantiates a lot of the questioning and kind of moved it from the fringe to more mainstream. What has it been like for you to watch that transition happen, being one of the only people that I know who's actually been taking this as a serious issue for so long?

Daymond Steer:

It's kind of fun to watch it explode. If there’s smoke, I suspect there might be some fire. Eric Weinstein of the Portal podcast had a tweet a year or two ago I'll just paraphrase. There's something going on with this and, no matter what it is, it could be the biggest story in the world, because it's either a massive government PSYOP for reasons unclear, or we're being visited, or our fighter pilots can't tell a balloon from a UFO, or they are enemy planes – something is going on with this. I'm just curious, personally. I mean, Congress is making a UFO office, the 2022 UFO Report just came out from the Director of National Intelligence. So something's going on, I don't know why more people aren't interested.

This article is part of The Granite Beat, a project by The Laconia Daily Sun and The Granite State News Collaborative, of which Laconia is a partner. Each week Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart, will explore with local reporters how they got some of the most impactful stories in our state and why they matter. This project is being shared with partners in The Granite State News Collaborative.