The premise of Born to Run the Local News was simple:

If Springsteen wrote a song about the passion behind community news, who and what would he write about?

The answer was an epic celebration and storytelling event about the people who make community news possible. Dozens of publishers from across the country became part of the story, more than 450 people registered to watch online, and nearly 140 local news publishers, reporters, and salespeople gathered in person in New Jersey — some traveling from as far as Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Hampshire.

It was the kind of event nobody really asks for, but everyone remembers. The gravity of the world-famous Stone Pony certainly helped. This wasn’t a stuffy hotel event space; it was a legendary rock-and-roll room with real history in the walls, and that spirit carried through the day.

The whole thing stretched the creative bounds of me and the Broadstreet Webinars team in every possible way. It was exhausting, emotional, ambitious, and deeply purposeful — not unlike the work community news publishers do every day.

Thank you to everyone who was part of it. I’m not sure anything quite like this will ever happen again, but it was recorded, documented, and shared here.