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Beatriz Roman's avatar

The Hartford story is appalling on so many levels. Thank you for writing about it then and today.

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Irene Baldwin's avatar

While the news industry has serious problems (Is that an understatement?), I think you have to make lemonade out of your lemons (which this site is doing) and embrace the digital world- it's what we're stuck with. My Dad wrote for over 35 years- up until 9 months before he died at the age of 86 in 2021- for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's newspaper. That was its own kind of community paper, with quite a following, actually, in blue collar Philly. He would agree with you about the need for community papers, whether it is a geographic or affinity community. He thought the secular press would rarely cover what his paper did and when it did, it did so from a secular viewpoint, not the viewpoint of his community.

Anyway, the punchline is that the well-regarded Philadelphia Catholic Standard & Times was shut down over a decade ago by a not-so-well-regarded Archbishop. Jobs were lost, but a very good editor switched to a completely digital platform- CatholicPhilly. com which has survived to this day and flourishes. No, it's not the same as print, and many constituents have technology barriers, but it is still pushing out news no one else will. And my Dad kept banging out the stories for them when it transitioned; he was a prolific writer, google Lou Baldwin Catholic Philly if you're interested.

I think it is a challenge for community papers to survive- and one not to be minimized- and I think we need to mobilize the community to help keep them going, but there is a universe of people out there who still want information.

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