A Reporter’s Lonely Mission When the Writing Is on the Wall

It was just one of many coronavirus moments that Mr. Brandt has been chronicling. The parades outside Pottstown Hospital to show support for health care workers. The impact of isolation on people struggling with substance abuse. The shortage of laptop computers for disadvantaged homebound students — that is, until someone read his article and donated $60,000.

Mr. Brandt finished his interviews, including the one with that Tyrannosaurus-costumed counselor, and headed toward his car. He passed a teacher he knew who was holding an “I Miss You” sign for her students.

“Living the dream?” he asked.

“Not my dream,” she answered.

The quick exchange underscored how this was no dream: These are the new realities. Life has been transformed, and local newspapers, once central to that life, are diminished or gone.

The vacant Mercury building was sold, as is, to a local engineer last year for $440,000. The plan is to convert it into a boutique hotel.

Former Mercury employees and a few others were invited to take what they wanted before dumpsters received the accrued memories of a once-proud newspaper. Among the remnants were confidential personnel files that should have been destroyed years ago.

In the basement, where the ghost of an editor was said to reside, were bound volumes of old editions, and on the third floor, cabinets packed with clipped articles filed and arranged for quick research. What in newspaper parlance is called the morgue.

Bits of Mercury history went this way and that. The public library retrieved a few items of interest. The historical society stored some old editions in a garage. Fire buffs left with files related to — fires.