Sparsely, Sage and Timely
New York, newspapers, new ideas
By David V. Mitchell
I got a reminder of why I live in West Marin when I visited New York City last Friday through Sunday. It was the first time I’d been on Manhattan Island in roughly 20 years even though I taught high school in the suburb of Rye back in 1967. Since then, the city has changed in ways that are both incremental and dramatic. What used to be a crowded city is now overflowing.
At its best, the city is such a cosmopolitan mix that ever couple coming down the street is speaking a different language; moreover, women’s streetwear in the Big Apple is amazingly revealing by Bay Area standards. Men in New York, meanwhile, dress even more like slobs than men do here.
I hadn’t been in crowds so thick since the last time I was in Asia 15 years ago. On downtown sidewalks in New York, people have to continually step around each other. Although the city proper of Seoul, South Korea, is the largest in the world, 10.8 million, while New York comes in 10th with 7.4 million, New York’s metropolitan area is the fourth largest in the world, 16.4 million; behind Tokyo, 27 million; Mexico City, 17 million; and São Paulo, Brazil, 16.8 million.
Because of problems with an ancient air conditioner in my hotel room, I had to get up every couple of hours Friday night, go to the window, and fiddle with the controls. Each time I looked down at the street, even at 4 a.m., there were more people walking around than on typical weekday afternoons in Point Reyes Station.
The reason for my visit was to attend the first National Consortium on Community Journalism, which was held at Columbia University. The Center for Community Journalism at Oswego State University in New York had organized the event, which was paid for with foundation money.
The purpose of the event was to bring publishers of good community papers together in order to brainstorm about what can be done to improve community newspapers nationwide. Roughly 30 of us showed up, and the discussions were lively.
The Light describes its news coverage as having an "informed point of view" in the vein of The Economist, as I noted last week. If you think about it, you’ll realize that even readers who complain that too much reporting is "biased," in fact, don’t want mindlessly even-handed reporting. Can you imagine an American news report during World War II not taking a position?
It would have been absurd to write: "President Roosevelt today told Congress that defeating the Axis will require full Allied cooperation. German Chancellor Adolph Hitler, however, disagreed and said it would be better for the democratic nations to surrender and accept Nazi supremacy. Asked about the chancellor’s statement, President FDR alleged that Hitler was not telling the whole story..."
Other publishers at the consortium agreed with the point; indeed, my most-striking impression of the group is that the publishers of really good community newspapers all feel an obligation to fight for the little guy, to give a voice to minorities, to bring injustices to light.
Mind you, none of the publishers were from big papers, such as The New York Times, or alternative newspapers, such as The Pacific Sun or Bay Guardian. They typically were from weekly or biweekly newspapers like The Rutland (Vermont) Herald and The Riverdale (New York) Press, little papers doing a professional job of covering local news in a timely fashion.
Years ago, I wrote a bit about Hazel Brannon Smith, owner of four weeklies in Mississippi, who refused to be intimidated despite advertising boycotts organized by White Citizens Councils and the firebombing of her newspaper offices. In 1964, she won a Pulitzer for her editorials in favor of integration.
I was reminded of her when Bernard Stein, publisher of The Riverdale Press, told of having his newspaper firebombed after he editorially defended a bookstore’s right to sell author Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which upset fundamentalist Muslims. The firebombing was predictably counterproductive since it increased respect for the paper.
Stein later won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, as did David Moats of The Rutland Herald, who championed an initiative that gave gays and lesbians the right to get married in Vermont. Despite the angry reaction of some readers, both publishers refused to be intimidated.
With so much to be proud of in the community press, what isn’t so great? Some community newspapers put very little effort into reporting on their communities, the publishers agreed. There was also universal agreement that reporters on papers of all sizes need more training. The point was not a simple complaint that reporters are unprepared for their work. Some are. Some aren’t. Rather there was agreement that reporters need to keep attending journalism workshops after they’re on the job in the same way that teachers are expected to keep taking classes.
There was also agreement among the publishers that we should all work with school students to interest them in reading newspapers and to inspire some of them to become journalists themselves. It seems appropriate, therefore, to note that Tomales High sophomore Isabelle LeMieux this summer began interning at The Light as a photojournalist, and for the second consecutive year, student Kim Ventresca is our correspondent covering Tomales High sports.