A Word from the Publishers

Over the past couple of years we've been reading with a good deal of consternation about the travails of the newspaper industry. Those reports hit distressingly close to home when we learned, shortly before press time, that all seven of the Taconic weekly papers, including Rhinebeck-Red Hook's own Gazette Advertiser, were being closed down immediately by their owner, the Journal Register Company. (A week earlier, the company had announced it was closing Columbia County's Independent.)

Not so long ago, Dutchess County could point with some pride to the Taconic papers as evidence of a healthy local press servicing an informed citizenry. Of course, that was when they were a string of independent papers under the local ownership of Millbrook publishers Ham and Helen Meserve. The papers' demise was certainly not sealed by the sale of the papers to the multimedia giant Journal Register Company. Still, one web article blames much of the Journal Register Company's financial troubles on problems resulting from an ill-advised 2004 debt-encumbered investment into a string of local papers in the Detroit area. In terms of publishing philosophy, we fault the company's decision to re-style the papers to make them virtually indistinguishable from each other or from the Kingston Daily Freeman, the company's local flagship daily. In fact when the Journal Register took over nearby Connecticut's Litchfield County Times a few years ago, the company bowed to pressure from influential community members not to change the paper's distinctive look. Whether that will offer the LCT any protection against the company's larger corporate woes is another question (on February 21, the Journal Register Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.)

One hopeful sign from that neck of the woods, however, is that the 138-year-old Bristol (Connecticut) Press, a small city daily aquired some years ago by the Journal Register only to have its imminent demise announced last fall, recently found a former Newsday executive who bought up the paper's assets and has got it up and running again along with some other regional Connecticut weeklies.

In fact, there's some evidence to show that well-managed local papers that remain in touch with their readership have proved largely impervious to the hemmoraging ad revenue losses typical of the big city print dailies. Take our own situation: About Town has been an independent publication in the northern Dutchess and southern Columbia county areas since 1997. Our only informal association is with About Town of New Paltz & Highland, which has been around even longer. Plans are moving forward for a third, independently-owned About Town in the Delaware County area to publish its first issue this summer. We've worked hard to fill a need in the local areas and, despite a few ups and downs, have been graced with an ever-widening circle of readers, advertisers and contributors that shows no signs of faltering.

— Paul & Gail

Guest Artist
The digital images drawn by Red Hook guest artist Anna Cinquemani celebrate the good bargains found in a recession friendly yard sale. Anna works as a freelance graphic designer and a part time image cataloger in the Visual Resources Department at Bard College. Her abstract paintings and collages can be viewed at www.annacinquemani.com.