Rescuing the Messenger (Corona, Hermosa Beach, Twain: city hall, bankruptcy, gated)

[Cida]

I wish there were more efforts like this.


Meet the Unlikely Hero Saving California’s Oldest Weekly Paper
High in the Sierra, Downieville, Calif., was about to become the latest American community to lose its newspaper. In stepped Carl Butz, a 71-year-old retiree.
“Tomorrow I have to fill the paper,” he said with only mild anxiety. “The question is, will it be a four-page paper or a six-page paper?”
But here he was, a freshly minted newspaper proprietor, having stepped in at the beginning of the year to save The Mountain Messenger, California’s oldest weekly newspaper, from extinction. The Messenger was founded in 1853. Its most famous scribe was Mark Twain, who once wrote a few stories — with a hangover, the legend goes — while hiding out here from the law.
For the residents of Downieville — and there are not many; the population is about 300 — who for generations counted on The Messenger to arrive every Thursday, through wildfires and power outages and economic booms and busts, Mr. Butz has become an unlikely local hero, a savior of a cherished institution.
“Thank God for Carl, he stepped in,” said Liz Fisher, a former editor of the paper who lives across the street from its office and runs The Sierra County Prospect, an online news site. “It was devastating for everybody that we were going to lose The Mountain Messenger.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/u...ornia-newspape

[Ultrarunner]

Got to love stories like this

[CCbaxter]

Print is dead.
Egon Spengler PhD

[HappyinCali]

Great story. Thanks for posting

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by CCbaxter

Print is dead.
Egon Spengler PhD

Disagree.

“More insidious than big scandals is the absence of everyday reporting of the communities — the city council, what’s going on with zoning, what’s going on with the board of education,” says Nick Charles, a spokesman for the Save Journalism Project, a freelancer who worked at three newspapers that were later downsized--Newsday, the New York Daily News and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “These are the routine things that we get from newspapers that are local outlets.”

https://www.latimes.com/business/sto...ruptcy-effects

[Cida]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Disagree.

“More insidious than big scandals is the absence of everyday reporting of the communities — the city council, what’s going on with zoning, what’s going on with the board of education,” says Nick Charles, a spokesman for the Save Journalism Project, a freelancer who worked at three newspapers that were later downsized--Newsday, the New York Daily News and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “These are the routine things that we get from newspapers that are local outlets.”

I'm not always sure about the comparative importance of local versus national news, but I think it's important to just have the habit of reading, letting yourself be available to longer, detailed stories, not just short TV segments and tweets.

[CCbaxter]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Disagree.

“More insidious than big scandals is the absence of everyday reporting of the communities — the city council, what’s going on with zoning, what’s going on with the board of education,” says Nick Charles, a spokesman for the Save Journalism Project, a freelancer who worked at three newspapers that were later downsized--Newsday, the New York Daily News and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “These are the routine things that we get from newspapers that are local outlets.”

https://www.latimes.com/business/sto...ruptcy-effects

I was being flippant....however.

Local paper and local news long ago stopped reporting. My local paper is owned by the USA Today company and is full of nothing but gossip, traffic accidents and which moron with tattoos on his face was arrested by the cops. Then there's a few pages of aggregated national news.
If there was any actual reporting going on, i would subscribe.

[CA4Now]

The print industry’s demise has larger implications, news industry analyst Ken Doctor and others say. Without reporters keeping tabs on city halls, state agencies and community organizations, there would be little accountability. Researchers have found that newspapers remain the nation’s most comprehensive, fact-based source of information.

The widespread financial woes come even as traffic to newspaper websites has doubled, Doctor said, and subscriptions to digital sites have dramatically increased as readers rally to support trusted news outlets.

“This [coronavirus] story has been transformational: It has shown the absolute uniqueness and value of local news,” Doctor said.

It’s a grim paradox, said Kevin Cody, who owns the 45,000-circulation Easy Reader News in Hermosa Beach.

“The irony is that interest in the product is skyrocketing,” Cody said.

Coronavirus crisis hastens the collapse of local newspapers. Here’s why it matters:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...apers-struggle

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by CCbaxter

Local paper and local news long ago stopped reporting. My local paper is owned by the USA Today company and is full of nothing but gossip, traffic accidents and which moron with tattoos on his face...

I don't know. We don't get the local newspaper, but recently our L.A. Times delivery person tossed the local one on our driveway by mistake and when I read it, it looked as if there was a lot of local news.

[sourdough]

Thanks for posting. Always liked that little historic gold rush town. Never knew about the paper being the oldest weekly. I was up there last year camping and fishing after a 30 year hiatus. I have fond memories from wandering/exploring around the Tahoe National Forest in the 1970’s. Gave me a short mental reprieve from news about covid-19 and politic’s.