What happens when a community loses its newspaper?

CommonWealth Magazine
After publishing for 110 years, the Holyoke (Mass.) Transcript-Telegram went out of business and left the community of 30,000 without a daily newspaper. That was in 1993. “In Holyoke babies have been born, raised and sent off to college or war or other adult responsibilities without ever seeing their names in a T-T article taped to a refrigerator,” writes former Miami Herald and Boston Globe editor Thomas Fiedler. “Congressmen, mayors, and city councilors have been elected, served, and retired without knowing a hometown daily’s beat reporter.”

Journalist David Reid tells Fiedler that only rarely now does any reporter attend a Holyoke government meeting. “And when no reporters go to these meetings, or on a daily basis ask questions of city officials, government can operate in the dark,” Reid says. “The citizens are not informed and they don’t know how to make decisions.”

But Fiedler says the Holyoke story isn’t without the possibility of a happy ending for both journalism and the citizens. A group called CRUSH — Citizens for the Revital­ization and Urban Success of Holyoke — aims to “maximize Holyoke’s potential to reclaim its historic infrastructure and its reputation as an innovative, diverse, culturally vibrant and sustainable city” and has set up crushonholyoke.org. So far CRUSH has attracted 885 dues-paying members and has emerged as something of a hybrid of political party, social network, and information conduit, reports Fiedler. If the site becomes attractive enough to local businesses to draw advertising, a spokesman for the group says he could envision it supporting a professional reporting staff.