Small Town Newspaper Publisher Overwhelmed By Local Support

MOUNT KISCO, NY — As small businesses suffer during the new coronavirus pandemic, a small-town newspaper company has discovered just how much its readers value its work.

"The new financial challenge means our scrappy publishing business must fight for survival —while continuing to provide important local news and information as a public service during this unprecedented crisis," said Adam Stone, founder and publisher of Examiner Media, which serves Westchester and Putnam counties.

Stone knows whereof he speaks. Local businesses in the communities he serves are struggling or going under. Advertising revenue has just dried up.

So he thought long and hard about an idea from the Local Media Association, which suggested fundraising.

"Doing so was about a million miles from my comfort zone, and I worried whether more than a dozen years of goodwill would be squandered if the request was misunderstood," he told the readers of his four free papers.

The LMA, whose members include large and small newspapers plus TV and radio stations, told them all, "If you believe your community and your audiences value the local journalism you do, believe it’s vital to a functioning democracy, and would be devastated if it were gone, it is important to level with them about needing help to get through the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic."

So Stone used their template, the COVID-19 Local News Fund, to create a fundraising drive online.

Contributions to The Examiner's fund drive will help pay for news resources to cover the impact of the virus on local communities and everything else that's still going on, from business and government to recreation and the environment.

He has reached $17,538 of his $25,000 goal.

"I've been overwhelmed by the support from Examiner readers," Stone told Patch. "The generosity is a testament to the thirst people have for professionally-reported, fact-checked local news. There's a future for independent, community journalism and I've concluded it must include ongoing financial support from the readers who are desperate for us to quench their thirst."

"Publishing real local news doesn't come cheap," said Stone, who started his publishing company in the basement of his Mount Kisco condo in 2007.

But there's even more to it, he said. "The Examiner - COVID-19 Local News Fund is evidence there's a solution to the broken business model plaguing our industry and, by extension, our country. We can't allow for any news deserts. Community journalism doesn't need to just survive. It needs to thrive."

That's even more essential in a time of loud, partisan punditry, false claims and fake news.

"If you have a good local newspaper, you know how your mayor and city council are addressing the crisis. You know what’s open, what isn’t, and the state of education and government services. You’ll see opinion columns and editorials assessing how well the public sector is serving you and how things could still be improved. Local television has many strengths, but those are not among them," said Ken Paulson in a column in The Examiner. Paulson is known to Putnam and Westchester from his time running the newsroom at The Journal News before he became editor-in-chief at USA Today.

Now director of the Free Speech Center based at Middle Tennessee State University, Paulson pointed out, "America can’t afford to lose local news."

Find the Examiner and many other local businesses in the Chappaqua-Mount Kisco Patch directory of local businesses that are open or closed during the NY-PAUSE.