When I was growing up in the early 1980s, we had a weekly newspaper in our town. There was a woman assigned to cover our little neighborhood. I remember her calling each week to ask my mother what was new in our family. Did Jeremy make the honor roll this quarter? Had we gone on vacation recently? Did we get a new pet? She would take this information from anyone in the neighborhood who was willing to share it and would write a column each week. When the paper came out on Wednesdays, my mother was always excited to read what was going on in the neighborhood.
Everyone on our street knew each other. We played outside with the kids every day until dusk. My parents were in a bowling league with our neighbors. We had a block party in the street in the summer. When a new family moved in everyone welcomed them and introduced themselves. I guess you could say it was a great community.
A few years later when I was in the seventh grade we moved to a new neighborhood. There was no one there to welcome us. There were no block parties. No one played out in the street. Everyone kept to themselves. There also was no one from the weekly newspaper calling to get information to report about the neighborhood. It certainly felt like less of a community. It never occurred to me until I became involved with community newspapers that the difference between the two neighborhoods was the newspaper. Without the weekly story telling of the life events of our neighbors it became easy to lose connections.
This trend of the lost connection amongst neighbors seems to have accelerated over the past 20 years. Every year more and more communities lose the local person who writes about their neighbors. Instead of being printed in the newspaper for eternity, life events are posted online and washed away within minutes by a never-ending stream of information, which may or may not be real. All of this only leads to furthering the loss of a sense of community. A key element of community is real interactions with other people. As we replace real interaction with online, virtual interaction the sense of community continues to break down; and I fear this trend will continue as technology moves faster and faster.
Fortunately, there is an answer to this problem. The odds are if you are reading this you live in a community that still has a local newspaper. That also means that you still probably enjoy many of the things I described from my neighborhood growing up. When the opportunity arose three years ago to acquire newspapers across the country, we jumped at it. Rather than let technology destroy print products, we intend to use it to strengthen it.
We appreciate your subscriptions both online and in print, and your willingness to advertise with us. It all matters and it is what will allow us to remain sustainable in 2024 and for the generations of readers to follow. Our editorial staff is working hard to facilitate talks with members of your community right now, and we encourage your feedback. We need to have more conversations about what your paper should be and how it can be a vehicle for growth in the ever-changing digital world we live in.
Thank you for supporting your local publication. If you are not a subscriber, try us out. And if you already are, visit our website and encourage others to do the same. We have told your stories for generations. Help us rewrite ours.
Jeremy Gulban is the publisher of CherryRoad Media.