Exploring the Valley

From Paper To Valley Echo

• PC PRODUCTIONS • Season 1 • Episode 5

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A small mountain town can feel bigger than any city when the gym lights come up and the whole valley shows. We sit with Fred McCormick, founder of The Valley Echo, to trace how a stay-at-home dad found journalism, begged his way into a newsroom job, and ultimately launched a hyperlocal site three days before the world shut down. What kept it alive? The same spirit that fills Owen High bleachers and neighborhood restaurants: people who care enough to show up.

Fred explains why high school sports are more than scores—they’re a living map of Swannanoa Valley. Business owners, students, parents, and longtime neighbors all share the stands, creating one of the most diverse rooms in town. We talk about the valley’s visitor-friendly heartbeat, the 50-plus local eateries that double as community hubs, and the centennial eagle plaque that ties today’s faces to a century of first families. Along the way, Fred shares the deeply personal story of his mother’s illness, the column he wrote during her final months, and the unexpected embrace from strangers who became support in the hardest season.

Threaded through it all is a case for local news as community infrastructure. As corporate consolidation thins hometown papers, voices like The Valley Echo keep names, stories, and context close to where they matter. If you’ve ever wondered what truly binds a place—shared grief, Friday night cheers, or a table where everyone has a favorite dish—this conversation offers a warm, honest answer. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves small-town stories, and leave a review to help more people find the valley’s voice.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Exploring the Valley. This is Cheryl Hyde, the director of the Black Mountain Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce and the Black Mountain Visitor Center. On this podcast, I'll be your guide to the people, places, and stories that make our community special. Each episode will share the heart of the Swannanoa Valley, from local businesses and hidden trails to festivals, history, and the voices of our neighbors. Whether you're a longtime resident or a first-time visitor, you'll find the pride of our community and the magic of the mountains right here. You're listening to Exploring the Valley, where local pride meets lasting magic. You're in for a ride, so buckle up. Good morning, Fred McCormick. It's really good to see you this morning. And I am, I know very little about you, and I'm looking forward to learning more about you. But I do know that you're the grand poo-bah of Valley Echo or the Valley Echo. The Valley Echo. The Valley Echo. Which when I was doing our trying to find a name for our newsletter every week, Valley Echo was like the number one thing that kept coming up. And I was like, well, that's really taken. I can't touch that. So that's how Voice of the Valley came because I'm also an alliteration girl. So I love the alliteration thing. So anyway, but I know very little about you. I know that you live here, you have a family here, and I want to know about things like that. But tell me a little bit about how you came to come up with or start the Valley Echo.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so that's a it's a long story, but I'll give you the the shortest one. So I I stumbled into journalism as a stay-at-home father. We were briefly living in Cashers, North Carolina. I was, like I said, staying at home. And I got a part-time job writing for the newspaper out there, which is called the Crossroads Chronicle, and did that for about a year, and then we moved back to Black Mountain because we were, we had been living here before. And when I moved to Black Mountain, I was looking for work and I went to a the job fair at the Ag Center. I have it every year. And Gannette was there, the owner of the Black Mountain News, the company that owns the Black Mountain News. And I applied. Well, they had a booth and I didn't apply. I the I knew there was an opening in Black Mountain, and I came straight to the paper and the editor at the time. I begged her for the job. I pleaded. It was probably, I probably was embarrassing myself the way that I was pleading. But I told her, I will, you know, there's going to be more qualified people, but there's not going to be someone who works harder because I live here and I don't want to embarrass myself. And that was my pitch. She hired me. I was with the paper for six years. I was the last employee in town for the paper when they had the office over by the post office. And in 2019, the end of 2019, December, I left the paper and decided I'm going to do the same thing, roughly, community news, focused on the Swannanoa Valley, and I started the Valley Echo. And three days after I launched, they shut down the schools for COVID. So I was like, oh wow, I just made a terrible mistake. But it it's worked out so far.

SPEAKER_00:

It's amazing how many stories you hear about people who started something and then two or three days later, a month later, COVID hit. And it is, I mean, you remember how you felt. I'm sure you remember more how you felt that day. But but one of the things I love the most about Valley Echo is how concentrated you are on the school sports and the area sports. And I know that you're a sports guy and that's kind of your thing, but I do appreciate the fact that you do that. Can you tell me kind of, is that just because that's what you love, or is that what you think is the tell me.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, there's so there's a couple of things at play there. One is when I can't, so the when I started co when I started doing local journalism in Cashers, I my job was just school sports out there. And when I got here, when I got the job in Black Mountain, I was it was all community news. So it was, you know, everything. But I know sports and my feel and I didn't have a lot of experience. So my feeling was I'm going to lean hard into Owen sports and use that to improve in the craft of journalism. And eventually it got to the point where I was producing a lot of sports content and I came to love that community and the the Owen community. And part of the reason for that is it really represents to me kind of the heart of the community when you do the the Owen sports stuff, because it's it's probably the most diverse gathering of people you're gonna find on any given night in the Swannanoa Valley. So you could go to a basketball game and you're gonna have, I don't know, a hundred, maybe a couple hundred people in the gym, and it's gonna be people from all different kinds of backgrounds. It's gonna be business owners, it's gonna be, it's really gonna be whoever. And I feel like over time it just became a thing that I felt compelled to do. And and part of that is it's the only kind of writing that I do that doesn't feel like work. So I could do a sports story, I could do it during this podcast if you wanted to tell me something, and I would I would do it. So it's become just a thing where it hits a lot of it hits a large a lot of demographics, and also it's just a thing I've become known for over the years, uh covering news here.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool. So you just said that, and that leads me to that it you're saying that it's a cross-section of of our community as a whole, because it it takes Wananoa, it takes Black Mountain, it takes all the pieces, puts them together. And then that's a good cross-section of the community that's here, and that so you're also a family guy. You've got family who's here and you have children who are one child. One dog. You're thinking middle school I'm thinking middle school. She's in middle school. She's in middle school, right? So we're headed to high school soon. Next year. Next uh. I know. Oh dad. I'm drilling. I'll pray for you. It'll be fun. It'll be fun, it'll be great. But tell me when you talk to the people in the community. I mean, you I just said you do a lot of sports and you did too, but you also do a really good job with the community news. So I know that I think you were the first person to reach out to me when I got here and when I had this job brand new a year ago almost, and you know, wanted to do a story about where you're from, what's your story? What are you gonna do? One of the things you do really well is is that you just talk to so many different people and in the community. You talk to residents, you talk to business owners, parents, you actually talk to students. What do you think makes Swannanoa Valley so different from other communities? But also, I mean, why are you here? Why do you stay? Why do you stay?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, one so I'm I was born and raised in a in a big city. And when I came here to visit, which is how I ended up moving here, I was I couldn't believe I couldn't believe that this community was real. I couldn't believe that people lived like this in this small town where a lot of people knew each other. Where I'm from, there's a lot of anonymity. So you don't necessarily know all your neighbors, and you definitely don't necessarily know people on the other side of town. Here, the first thing that I was drawn to was the people wanted to know you. So it took me a while when I moved here to adjust to the fact that when someone said, you know, when someone asked you how you were doing, that was not just something that they said in passing. They were genuinely curious to know how you were doing. And that really made me that made me warm up to this place quickly. And the the thing that really has kept me here is I've I've been here to watch this place grow for the last 18 years, I think I've been living here. And even as it's grown, the genuine care for each other in the community has I feel like that's maintained. And that is something that I'm drawn to. I like the idea that everyone more or less knows each other or knows who each other is. And in an environment like that, I feel like it keeps people honest as far as their relationships are concerned, because you know you're gonna run into that person later, or you might, you know, you might be friends with a person who you a lot of mutual friends. So I I've enjoyed all of that since I've been here, and that's one of the things that has kept me here.

unknown:

Cool.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the things I've learned quickly after I got here is that one wall in the chamber needs to be a giant family tree. And so you can figure out who is related to whom and how they're connected, and even even if they're no longer married to somebody, and like how I don't know. I feel like there needs to be a family tree passed out when you move here in the relocation packet.

SPEAKER_02:

There is. I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but you know the Eagle statue on Sutton Avenue over by the depot. That is a centennial plaque of the first families of the first 100 years of Black Mountain, and that is something that's worth checking out because you will see names on there, and then you will definitely recognize the people they are connected to now.

SPEAKER_00:

This is what I love about this, is I always learn something new. Like I've seen the eagle a thousand times.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that centennial.

SPEAKER_00:

Never paid attention to it more than just to look at it, I guess. But very cool. Thank you. So my new family tree is down by the depot. So we have lots of visitors who come to this town. And I think it's interesting to me how often people here are excited about visitors being here. And you don't have to actually be a stro shop owner or something for you to be excited about a tourist. I hate to call them tourists, a visitor. I'm sorry. It sounds like a baseball team when you call them a tourist. But anyway. It is. I know. I love that story too. But one of the things that I think is interesting that is that people aren't like, ugh, tourists. They really are excited about them. And when people come into the visitors center who are visiting, people who are there who live here are usually better advocates or ambassadors, I don't know what the right word is, but for our town than than the volunteers or me who are standing there helping them because people are really excited about helping them find different things. What do you think is your favorite or go-to or your family's go-to activity that really is is visitor-based?

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, so we I think the the the short answer to that is we eat at local restaurants all the time. I mean, it's a thing we just I just uh I don't know if I should say the restaurant, but I just ate at one last night with my family. And it's all it's like a thing that it's like being it's again, because I wasn't born here. It's like being a visitor all the time. I do tell people who I meet who have moved here recently that I bet you the first maybe two or three years that that I lived here, I felt like I was on vacation the whole time and I was working, but I it it's just felt that way because you this place is specifically catered to visitors because visitors are in the soul of the place. There wouldn't be a Black Mountain without people who come up seasonally or come up, you know, to j just tourists, because we do have visitors and tourists, those are a little different. Yeah. And I think that you can feel it, you can feel it in in the air. And it and on a weekend, it's easy to just fall in and be a visitor, even if you live in town. I think that's one of the another one of the appeals about this place.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you know how many independent restaurants there are? Eateries, drinkeries, and all that. There are so many. Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

And I feel like I've seen so are we talking Black Mountain or are we talking Swanoa Valley? We're talking Swannanoa Valley. Oh, wow. I'm just gonna throw out a round number of fifty. That's about right. You did well.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, there's only there are 38 in Black Mountain. Alone? Yeah. Yeah. Which is unreal to me. You know, and I've yes, I have eaten at all 38 of the restaurants. I probably have to. I know I have. Where did you eat last night? The Grange. I love the Grange. Delicious. But uh, we only go on Mondays because of the local special, man. I just that's not true. We don't only go on Mondays. But we especially go on Mondays. That is definitely where we go today, today's day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So would Grange be your favorite or just where you went last night? It's just where I went last night. I I don't like to say that I have a favorite because I think living here for a while now you you kind of go, you run the cycle.

SPEAKER_02:

You know what I mean? So there's like sometimes I don't feel like going to a certain place and then I, you know, I'm I'm into another place more, but then that always rotates and changes. So so you could have I could have a favorite place at any given time, a different favorite place.

SPEAKER_00:

Very cool. Me too. Mine changes by the day, but I don't have any trouble eating everywhere. It's pretty bad. What else we have for you? I love the story of you sharing about your mom. Is there a way to about it's a downer story, but it's a cool story that you were able to write. I think that's what's it's not too depressing. Because of the because of the job you have, you're able to present things. And I think that's cool.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and I think there's there's something to that. So one thing about it is that you know, journalism is not a not necessarily a public facing position, but if you're in a town this small and you're writing for the paper and then you're writing for, you know, a local news website, then it does become kind of you you're at least somewhat of a public figure if you live here. And when my my mother, and this this is the time of year that I tend to think about it. My mother was diagnosed with with cancer in two thousand the end of 2018. So it was, I think, right after the Thanksgiving holiday, must have been right around now. And then I I ended up taking a bunch of time off of work. My mother and I were very close. She lived up here, she's the person I followed to come up here, and and everything went really quickly after that. She was she was diagnosed, she was in the hospital through the holidays. I was there with her, and again, I before this time off, I had never taken an extended period of time off. I was with the paper at that time, but I was producing content constantly, you know, every week, a bunch of stories. And I felt at the time, I felt like maybe I was letting people down who didn't know my situation. So I decided I was going to write about this and let at least offer it as an explanation to the community for where I had been and maybe you know why I hadn't been producing as much stuff. And I wrote a column about what was going on with my mother, and and it was published in the paper, and the support that I got from the community uh was overwhelming. I I had random people walking up to me in restaurants places and hugging me and just telling me, uh, you know, I'm thinking about you, I'm praying for you, I'm I'm, you know, I'm there for you, all kinds of stuff. It was it was very sad. My my mother ended up passing away the following January, January of 2019. And but I did feel uplifted by the community. So now when I hear stuff like this, where people talk about feeling uplifted by this community, it's something I can truly relate to. It it was it was tough because there was a lot of like for me, just crying in public with not a thing that I've done before or since, but I was vulnerable and the community was really, really helped me with that. I felt comfortable being that vulnerable here. And I I don't think that most people live in a kind of place where they feel that that level of comfort. And and I was able to share the the piece that I wrote with my mother before she passed, and and she was really touched by it. And that's something that her and I will always be able to share because she will always know or I will always know that she knew that I put that information out there and how the community responded. And again, she's the one who's responsible for bringing me here in the first place.

SPEAKER_00:

I can't think of a better way to finish this out than to say, I mean, what a picture of our community and the support that we find for things that we might think might just be personal. Uh-huh. But the whole wide world gives a flip about us in this town. And I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Anything else you want to add or anything I've forgot? I'm sure there's plenty.

SPEAKER_02:

I I want to say, I think I would like to add that the the local news is important. And I and I this is a little, you know, a little soliloquy I'll give people sometimes. Local news is important. And if you look around, it's going away. The the more that corporations buy up newspapers, local newspapers, the less local the news becomes, and you end up getting news from the city next to you or whatever. The the Swananoa Valley has always supported local news, and it continues to support local news. The people in this community do amazing things. We have amazing people in this community. And I think one of the things that makes local news so important here is that that's a that's part of our shared values as a community, is we we recognize the people who are doing amazing work here. And all I'm trying to do is tell their stories and put their picture out there so people can see and and know what the who these people are and what they're doing. And I I just really appreciate the community's support. And I also encourage people who to definitely check out the Valleyco because I I think you can get a real good sense of what this place is like from reading the website. It's all free.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And I love reading the Vale Eco. I I I am terrible, I am not a good reader, period. First of all, I'm not a good reader, so thank goodness for your pictures. You're the one who told me to start putting pictures in my newsletter, and I appreciate that, and it has happened. Um, but um pictures help, but I actually read about it after I see the picture, so I can see why that's important. But thank you very much for coming in today, and um I know I'll see you around. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on Exploring the Valley. Until next time, keep celebrating the pride of our community and discovering the magic of the mountains. In the meantime, you're free to move about the valley.