Local Newspapers Are Our Best Defense

I am guessing you don’t know that The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript is between editors. The former editor departed a few weeks ago for other pastures. So now, the newspaper and community await a new hire.

It is always, in my opinion, a twice-weekly miracle that the Ledger-Transcript reaches newsstands, and our mailboxes, in two sections, covering several towns, their governments, schools, sports, businesses, events, and personalities. They do it relying on a small, determined, but revolving staff of people united, presumably, by an interest in gathering and distributing the news. I am not writing a personal tribute piece, here. You can look up these people on the newspaper’s website. It won’t take you long. It’s a short list, anchored by a publisher who has—mercifully—been doing this long and steadily enough to keep the trains running on time, even in between editors. Tip your hat to them if you pass on the street. Or not. Your choice. But at a minimum, buy the paper. Doing so, will help keep the country running.

Our nation is divided. Polarized. Half of the people feel it is marching toward fascism. The other half believe it is being rescued from communism. The irony is that neither fascism nor communism have much use for divided opinion, and we can’t really be either unless, and until, all the newspapers go out of business. But that could certainly happen. The last time I checked, which was only a few months ago, newspapers were still failing at the rate of about a hundred a year. Mostly smaller newspapers, but the Washington Post could go at any time if Jeff Bezos gets bored with losing $50 to $70 million a year.

There are many reasons for the demise of newspapers. Money, of course: it is excruciatingly expensive to gather, print and distribute the news. Plus, twenty-four hour cable news, leading to changing audience behaviors going back decades such that today’s young consumers haven’t grown up with a newspaper habit. They may not have experienced a newspaper delivered to the home. Does any kid with a bicycle have a newspaper route anymore? And so on.

At the same time, technology—we’ll get to the internet in a moment—has made the rise of the national newspaper possible, a space created by Gannett (USA Today), but now dominated by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Apart from cutting into local and regional news business, it has meant consolidation in the sources of political opinion. See also: cable news, which is, today, much less about the news business than the opinion business. Truth is, the opinion business is cheaper—one well-compensated talking-head can attract as much, or more, audience than hard news, and—this is important—more reliably. Any given day, the news may not be interesting. But most days, Rachel Maddow, or Sean Hannity, will have us in our Barka Loungers right through the commercials.

Here is the bit about the internet: it does all the above, learns a great deal about you in the process, and follows you to bed at night. Enough said.

All of us have existed inside our silos since birth. Formed and shaped by experiences and opinions of those closest to us. But leaving the house each day, it used to be that you had a reasonable chance of being hit by an errant fact or opinion—as a business traveler in a new town with only the local paper to read, or a viewer of one of only three TV news networks (which were more practiced in objective news reporting). There’s basically no chance of being similarly struck these days. I sold newspapers over the counter for a few years as a local market owner. I confirm that non-New York Times readers would rather chew an arm off than buy that paper, even if it was the last one in the store. Same in reverse. I heard “I don’t read communist/fascists newspapers” so many times I decided that when one of those forms of government eventually takes over, it will be short work getting us to toe a party line. Surely, their administrators already know this.

So, where is our final line of defense under the circumstances? The local newspaper. The one outlet currently accountable to the melting pot of local community—the last place where we have to be in the same room with each other to debate school budgets and new bridges. The one outlet that best serves us by reporting both sides, giving room to all voices. Like ‘em or not. And still the one place to read about, and see pictures of our children, mothers, neighbors, and responders, keeping it real.

Be on the lookout for our new editor. Be grateful we’ve got one. And buy local.

Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, September 9th, 2025