By Larry Penner
Happy 81st Anniversary, Bayside Times/Little Neck Ledger and sister TimesLedger newspapers! Daily newspapers such as the New York Times, Post, Newsday and Daily News concentrate on international, Washington, Albany, City Hall, business and sports stories. They have few reporters assigned to cover local neighborhood news stories. These reporters have to compete against colleagues for limited available print space. As a result, daily newspapers miss significant news, civic, political and transportation stories from Queens communities.
Newspapers and magazines have to deal with increasing costs for newsprint, delivery and distribution along with reduced advertising revenues and declining readership due to competition from the Internet, cable news and other information source.
Challenges on maintaining the bottom line have also resulted in less resources being devoted to investigative reporting and a greater reliance on wire service stories. As a result, original newspaper content continues to shrink. This puts even more pressure on the remaining reporters assigned to various departments. There is intense competition between international, national, state, city, business, sports, entertainment and other sections of newspapers. It is becoming more difficult to provide real detailed coverage of local news.
Weekly newspapers based in Queens provide more in depth coverage of local news not found in major daily newspapers.
We continue to be fortunate to live in one of the few remaining free societies, with a wealth of information sources available. Sadly, most American cities and suburbs are down to one local daily or weekly newspaper.
Please join me along with your neighbors who read local weekly community newspapers. Patronize their advertisers; they provide the revenues necessary to keep them in business. Let them know you saw their ad. This helps keep our neighbors employed and the local economy growing.
Larry Penner
Great Neck
