
{"id":316,"date":"2007-05-24T08:34:25","date_gmt":"2007-05-24T16:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/05\/24\/why-we-should-support-our-hometown-newspaper\/"},"modified":"2007-05-24T08:34:25","modified_gmt":"2007-05-24T16:34:25","slug":"why-we-should-support-our-hometown-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/05\/24\/why-we-should-support-our-hometown-newspaper\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we should support our hometown newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/05\/jlnewmug05.jpg\" height=\"221\" width=\"167\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Jock Lauterer<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>By Jock Lauterer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Look, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be straight up with y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all: this ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t spin.<\/p>\n<p>While I have no financial capital invested in this paper, I do have a vested interest in the well-being of The Carrboro Citizen. Because I was present at the moment of conception and birth, if you will, I consider myself this paper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fairy Godfather (think: Disney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cinderella\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nSome of you may recognize my name from photo credits and previous columns, or from the Carrboro Commons, the warts-and-all online lab newspaper produced by my Community Journalism class at UNC.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here to tell you why I love my hometown newspaper and why we should all support it.<\/p>\n<p>At last count, there were 20-plus publications out there in the racks along Franklin and Main streets, including a slew of free papers.<\/p>\n<p>Add to that news menu The Carrboro Citizen.<\/p>\n<p>So why is this new paper special? How is it different from the others? And why should you care about whether The Citizen fails or flourishes?<\/p>\n<p>To answer those questions, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s go to little Yerington, Nev., where that town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 3,700-circulation weekly paper, the Mason Valley News, bears the following unequivocal motto beneath it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nameplate:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153THE ONLY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD THAT GIVES A DAMN ABOUT YERINGTON.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>There you go. The Citizen is the only newspaper in the world that really cares about Carrboro. And here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my proof: Why has there never before been a full-fledged, standalone, all-local newspaper in Carrboro?<\/p>\n<p>Because historically publishers have looked at Carrboro not as a community but as a market.<\/p>\n<p>Carrboro isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a big enough market to support a newspaper \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so went the conventional publisher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wisdom. Never mind the fact that Carrboro as a community clearly needed, wanted and deserved its own voice-bulletin board-refrigerator door-mirror-scrapbook-history book-chat room \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 all the many things a quality community newspaper can and should be.<\/p>\n<p>So what kind of publisher would go against the grain? It would have to be someone with experience, vision and well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6cojones. Enter Robert \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bubba\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dickson, owner of the Hoke County News-Journal and newly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153retired\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to Carrboro. With the practiced eye of a veteran publisher, Dickson quickly realized how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cool\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and yet journalistically overlooked Carrboro was. After over six months of research, Dickson put together a small but talented staff led by the veteran local journalist Kirk Ross, and on March 21, after several all-nighters, launched The Citizen. Heady times indeed.<\/p>\n<p>Now, two months later, the adrenalin high of a start-up has receded and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s down to the nitty-gritty hard work of putting out a quality paper every week. But a newspaper is not only an information source; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a business too. And whether an independent, all-local broadsheet newspaper published exclusively for Carrboro can make it financially is a huge risk \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a risk even big chains with all their financial resources weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t willing to take.<\/p>\n<p>Let me introduce a novel thought: We Carrborians need to think about The Citizen like a print\/online version of a public broadcasting station. That is to say, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not just readers; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re underwriters. Either we readers and advertisers support The Citizen or it goes away.<\/p>\n<p>That means if you have a local business, you need to buy an ad. Not just to promote your business, but also to help underwrite this unique publication. If you are a reader, you can do two things: First, tell advertisers you saw their ad in The Citizen, and then subscribe by going to delivery@carrborocitizen or by phoning 942-2100.<br \/>\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure if the Cowboy Poet, Baxter Black, lived in Carrboro, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be a loyal subscriber to The Citizen. A couple of years back he penned a column headlined \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why I love my hometown newspaper.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Though Black was writing about the weekly San Pedro (Ariz.) News-Sun, I bet he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d love equally our Carrboro Citizen. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the gospel according to Baxter Black:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Small-town papers often thrive because CNN or The New York Times are not going to scoop them for coverage of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153VFW Fish Fry\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bridge Construction Delay\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or boys and girls playing basketball, receiving scholarships, graduating, getting married or going off to war\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think of local papers as the last refuge of unfiltered America \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a running documentary of the warts and triumphs of Real People \u00e2\u20ac\u201c unfettered by the Spin and Bias and the Opaque Polish of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Homogenized Journalism.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is the difference between Homemade Bread and Pop Tarts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><em>Jock Lauterer, the author of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d teaches at the UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communication where he may be reached at jock@email.unc.edu or 962-6421. The Carrboro Commons may be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocommons.org \">carrborocommons.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jock Lauterer By Jock Lauterer Look, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be straight up with y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all: this ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t spin. While I have no financial capital invested in this paper, I do have a vested interest in the well-being of The Carrboro Citizen. Because I was present at the moment of conception and birth, if you will, I consider myself&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}