Joe Charpentier Daryn Slover

Right around the time I was heading off on my yearly Halloween vacation, a new guy was stepping up to cover the spot news beat in my absence.

Joe Charpentier, the fellow’s name is, and he’ll be covering the beat on the days that I’m off doing something else. I always fret a little, you know, when handing over this beat to someone I don’t even know. Why, it’s like handing your house keys over to a stranger and hoping he won’t trash the place while you’re off getting your ghoul on in Salem, New Hampshire.

But I haven’t worried much about Joe, who comes to us with years of experience under his belt and a built in zeal for breaking news. It’s a good thing, too. Since Joe (I’ve taken to calling him “Charp,” but that’s just a temporary moniker) came aboard, it’s been a wild ride of breaking news. On one of his very first days, a man set himself on fire in a horrific scene in Poland. We’ve had a murder down by the river in Lewiston, a fugitive chase that seems straight outta Hollywood and a whole bunch of gun play across the downtown.

So far at least, Joe seems to be settling in. He has a sense of humor, which is definitely a must in this bedlam place. He doesn’t seem easily rattled, and you can’t say that about everyone who covers this beat. But since I still don’t know very much about the chap I call Charp, I decided to hit him up with some probing questions under the guise of doing a Face Time feature. I’m crafty that way, you know.

Here are Joe’s answers.

Who are you and where did you come from? I’m from here and there, a Frenchman from away. I was born in Meriden, Connecticut, and raised on an unbridged island off the coast of Mount Desert Island. Don’t worry about which one — they know who they are. With no high school close by, I was shipped off on a scholarship to Northfield Mount Hermon School in western Massachusetts. Marooned for most of my life, socially, it was more an experiment than a growing experience. After that, I came back to Maine and attended University of Maine at Farmington and became a contented C-average political science student. UMF is also where I met my wife, Haley. If you get ahold of my transcript, you’ll see about when we got serious.

How did you get into the news game? After UMF, I was considering a career in film directing/writing, but Haley convinced me if we were going to be poor, I should at least put my talents somewhere they might matter. I was told all my life I’d be a fantastic writer, so I figured, “what the hell — let’s disappoint them.” So, we hopped across the pond to Swansea, Wales, and got our master’s degrees; she in media, communications and PR, and me in international journalism. After a year, we came back and I took a job at the Ellsworth Home Depot and Haley at a front desk in Bar Harbor. Searching to no avail for a reporting gig, I transferred to a Home Depot in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, and we stayed at my aunt and uncle’s place on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border. A family friend of Haley’s in Boothbay Harbor knew Kevin Burnham, editor for the Boothbay Register. She reportedly accosted him at the local Hannaford and said he should hire me. I quit my job in Massachusetts and returned to Jay where my wife’s folks live and trialed as a freelancer for the Register from there. Haley had our firstborn just before we moved to Bath, so I appealed to Kevin for the full-time job. I worked there for over five years on the Boothbay Harbor and regional spot news beats.

What do you think of Lewiston-Auburn so far? I’m finding an appreciation for the Twin Cities I don’t think I had before. When we lived in Bath, it was a good hub for everywhere we’d want to go in central and southern Maine. Work was up Route 1 and down 27; Portland, Augusta and L-A were all under an hour and Portsmouth just over an hour; and the in-laws were close enough. Now that we’re in the Franklin/Androscoggin area, we still have everything we wanted out of L-A and now we’re finding there’s more about the area we like, that we didn’t know about or give a chance to before. Except for Philadelphia, I’ve found no matter where you go, stereotypes don’t usually play out. It turns out you simply have to talk to people to understand a bit more about the place they call home.

How do you feel about weather stories for crime reporters? Shouldn’t there be some kind of law against it? Only if we can pass a law against weather forecasting. I’m kidding of course, but let’s put it this way: Scientifically, I know climate change is a serious issue, vaccines aren’t microchipped and are necessary for public health, crude oil will disappear in my kids’ lifetimes, and BPA doesn’t make women sprout little beards. However, I’m highly skeptical of meteorology and weather forecasting. I won’t go so far as to say it’s a pseudoscience, but I’m clearly biased. As reporters, we shouldn’t cover a subject we can’t cover impartially. It just wouldn’t be responsible.

As a newly minted cop beat reporter, you’ll need a gritty nickname. Got any ideas? I like Doc Holliday, but I don’t think it’s right. I don’t have the fastest guns in the West and I don’t think I’ll ever be anybody’s huckleberry except for maybe my wife’s. I’m drawing a blank, so I used an online nickname generator. There were so many to choose from and none of them good save one: Mealy Melvin. I’ve never met a Melvin and I suspect there are few with the experience to determine how mealy someone can be, but I like the mystery. Although . . . Cagey Dennis was another good one.

When you’re not sleuthing and writing for the paper, what’s your life like? Life is a mountain of chaos. We have three kids — 2, 4 and 5 — so I spend as much time as I can with the family whether that’s playgrounds, hiking or just running around outside, building blocks, etc. It makes me wish there was more time in the day, for sure. I also firmly believe reporters should be up to date on their material and doing their best to become overnight experts on their latest subjects. So, when I’m not on the job, I try to learn something new when I find the motivation and time. I’ve learned how to garden, knit, work on small motors and I do all my own vehicle work. I’m picking French back up and plan on learning how to throw knives and axes this winter. If I had the room, I’d be spending more time doing carpentry and making furniture. If I had the time and the headspace, I’d be working on some fiction.

Favorite journalists and writers? I’ve always been fond of long-form journalism, specifically first-person perspective and prose journalism. Yes, gonzo. Perspective always comes with the risk of bias, but I think many readers appreciate not just getting the information they buy a paper, magazine or a book for, but seeing firsthand the process the author goes through to bring them that information. I don’t see anything wrong with creative license, though I haven’t been at this long enough or built an audience large enough to expect anyone to trust my insight. In that way, Hunter S. Thompson and Jon Ronson are my biggest influences. They let a certain level of madness and mayhem come out through their work in completely different ways I find fascinating. As far as fiction goes, my favorites are Stephen King, Joe Hill, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Emma Gibbon, Maberry, Tremblay, Malerman and a plethora of the science fiction greats. Gillian Flynn is fascinating and other than Joyce Carol Oates, is the only author who’s so good at what they do, I have to put the book down.