Letter from the Editor: Why Input Fort Wayne?

It started with questions.

Then-San Francisco resident Crystal Vann Wallstrom was getting ready to move to Fort Wayne, and she wanted to know what her new life would be like.

Where would she find an active, cultured group of friends like she had in San Francisco? Where did people spend their time? What would she do on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons?

“I couldn’t find much about the local culture,” Vann Wallstrom said. 

 
She saw the local headlines. Found a few Facebook posts. Joined a mom’s group. But she still felt like she didn’t know what to expect from northeast Indiana when she moved here in June 2015.

In the weeks and months that followed, she realized why.

If you want to know the ins and outs of northeast Indiana, it’s up to you to connect the dots. The more events you attend, the more people you know, the more you realize how much this place has to offer.

Slowly but surely, Vann Wallstrom built her life here. She made friends and began working with local entrepreneurs. She attended the Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana’s My City Summit that fall and took a bus tour with the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership to learn more.

On the bus, she talked with Dan Swartz about the events he was hosting at Wunderkammer Company art center, and through it all, a realization kept nagging at her: There’s more to this region than meets the eye, and more people should know about it.

It’s a realization that hits many of us at some point—usually months or years after living here and getting involved with local projects. It hits those of us who grew up here or moved back just the same. Northeast Indiana is different than we expected. It’s more complex. More diverse. More interesting than we thought it would be, and if we didn’t put forth effort and give it a chance, then we might not have believed it was true.

For Joe Noorthoek, the moment came after he moved to Fort Wayne from Grand Rapids in 2000, and it was enough to convince him to stay.

A huge fan of his hometown, Noorthoek loved Michigan’s culture, cities, and lakes. He only left because the state’s economy was struggling, and he found a better job. But he intended to move back and start a business in Michigan after a few years.

Then he started plugging into northeast Indiana, and he noticed other people doing the same, investing in this area and their relationships here. After that, he couldn’t leave.

“I saw people doing good things, and I started to build a community I never had in Grand Rapids,” Noorthoek said. “I have a voice here, and I can make a difference.”

Today, Noorthoek owns a video production company called Mission3 Media on Berry Street downtown, and he’s proud to call Fort Wayne home.

But since he’s lived here, he’s heard a different story being told by Fort Wayne’s residents. When he asked a longtime resident to tell him about the region once, they described it as “a dump.”

That blunt negativity stuck with Noorthoek, and it made him want to tell his story to help other people see their community in a more positive light, as a place where they can make things happen if they get involved.

But how do you inspire someone to get involved in the first place? How do you make them feel included and excited, when they’ve felt excluded or neglected in the past?

By chance, he met Vann Wallstrom at a local idea-launching event called One Million Cups, and the two started brainstorming ways to change the narrative of northeast Indiana from the inside out—to inspire people who live here to engage and take pride in their communities, and to show people who might move here or start a business why they should.

That’s how the idea for Input Fort Wayne was born.

Since the beginning, Fort Wayne has been a place where people make things happen against all odds. It’s “the city that saved itself,” and it has a long history of building things from the ground up. Input Fort Wayne is where that innovative, do-it-yourself spirit lives on, and makes itself known.

Working with a company called Issue Media Group out of Detroit, Noorthoek, Vann Wallstrom, and a coalition of local sponsors laid the foundations for this publication to be an editorially independent, weekly online news source.

The idea is to pull back the curtain on what’s happening here, on things you might not see or experience if you didn’t seek them out, and share their stories with anyone who wants to know.

As Noorthoek, Vann Wallstrom, and so many others have discovered, northeast Indiana is full of exciting stories and ideas. You just have to know where to look.

We’re here to point you in the right direction and provide a platform to share your experiences, too.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and when something interesting or exciting is happening in your part of town, tell us about it.

Because the more people who know what’s happening in northeast Indiana, the more people feel engaged and invested in this community, and that’s good for all of us.

As always, thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Kara Hackett
Managing Editor of Input Fort Wayne