Your Hometown Paper
Living in New York City, I’ve never had cause to regularly read a small, local newspaper. After all, we have the New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post and multiple local television stations—including NY1, a cable station dedicated exclusively to the five boroughs—all reporting on New York-centric stories. But my husband and I have recently been lucky enough to start building a vacation home at the Jersey shore, so out of curiosity, I became a digital subscriber to the Cape May County Herald.
Let me tell you—that was the best $60 I’ve ever spent!
You might assume that small newspapers merely advertise local businesses or report on hyper-local events like car accidents or house fires. They certainly do those things, but they also do so much more. A good local paper also fosters community by highlighting important neighborhood institutions and profiling the people and things that make a town unique. And even more critically, they serve the indispensable function of holding local governments accountable.
In this era of bitter partisanship, it’s become standard practice to complain about the “mainstream media.” Yet, whatever you might think about national news sources, the loss of thousands of local newspapers across the country in recent years has had a significant negative impact because it has made it more difficult for citizens to monitor and influence the actions of their elected leaders. [You can read more about the decline in local news and rise of “news deserts” here.]
And social media is no substitute for traditional journalism. As Art Hall, the publisher of the Cape May County Herald, wrote a few weeks ago, ‘[w]hat is sold as transparency in government is anything but,” and now is “not a time to go without reporters watching the actions of local officials.” After all, it was a small weekly paper on Long Island, the North Shore Leader, that first reported the financial irregularities that eventually led to Representative George Santos’ expulsion from Congress and federal fraud charges against him. [More on the Santos case here.] And it was only through the tenacious efforts of Julie K. Brown, a reporter for the Miami Herald, that Jeffrey Epstein was exposed.
As the owner of a second home, I’m not allowed to vote in municipal elections in my new town. However, I pay significant property taxes and am entitled to know what decisions local officials are considering or making that could have a direct impact on my family’s or the community’s future. Living so far away, it was only because of Mr. Hall and his dedicated reporters that I had any idea the town council was considering various changes that could have impacted our property. But papers like the Cape May County Herald can’t survive if people only buy them once in a while at the supermarket or read an abandoned copy left behind at the diner. They need the consistent financial support of their readers. So please, take the first step in promoting good governance in your hometown and subscribe to your local paper today.