EXAMINER EDITORIAL
THE YORKTOWN EXAMINER, VOLUME 2 ISSUE 19
April 20, 2010
The Yorktown Examiner started—as all of Examiner Media’s incarnations have—with the idea that local print media and community journalism remains not just relevant but also vital. There is something contained in the look and the feel of a newspaper that no Web site and no blog, for all their obvious virtues, can ever capture. As we repeatedly and unabashedly assert explicitly in our motto and implicitly with our very existence, SMALL NEWS IS BIG NEWS.
We in the newspaper industry are told literally everyday we’re as good as dead. Many newspapers have responded to this death knell by investing in half-baked online publishing schemes. Instead of cannibalizing ourselves by trying to produce two competing products simultaneously, we’ve somewhat stubbornly resisted the industry trend and have stuck with what we know best—print newspapering.
It has actually paid off. Since The Yorktown Examiner’s December launch, the feedback from the public has been overwhelmingly positive. Immediately leaders in surrounding communities asked us when we would expand. So we faced a challenge, a choice. Our original assertion was that Yorktown deserved its own weekly paper and we would be the ones to deliver it. But now we are admittedly trying to thread a very fine needle. Our intention is to enhance the paper while not abandoning our continued efforts to saturate Yorktown with as much local news as we can produce in a week’s time. Our intention is to do this while also providing a neighbor—a municipal relative—with the same public service.
In short, we’re covering Cortlandt.
Over the past 19 weeks, many of the people who have complimented our work have also requested that we expand our coverage. Now that we’ve gained our footing in Yorktown, the question of whether to answer the call takes on a different form: It’s no longer why, it’s why not? If we are able to increase our circulation, expand our reach, and, most notably, extend our watchdog role, it seems that it is almost incumbent upon us to fulfill the requests.
Also, we hope that in expanding, our general readership, sources and advertisers will benefit from a more dynamic newspaper that covers a wider variety of stories and reaches more people. After all, in 2007, when we debuted The Examiner, our original central Westchester edition, we covered just two communities, Mount Kisco and Pleasantville. And the early editions of The Putnam Examiner, a little more than a year ago, featured just one town, Carmel. But now, between those two newspapers, we are covering more than a dozen municipal governments and school districts. With circulation of this newspaper as of today increasing to 6,000, up from the original 5,000, our three newspapers combine for a print run of 17,000, up from 2,000 total when we began in September of 2007. And we’re poised to hike that number even higher as demand necessitates. We can state with a high degree of confidence that, largely, our readers are better served now than they were when we only chronicled the happenings of a pair of Westchester municipalities. And we can also state with a high degree of confidence that the original communities we covered are not being shortchanged.
For The Yorktown Examiner, Cortlandt is the logical next step.
Cortlandt and Yorktown, as anyone familiar with the landscape can tell you, are very much sister municipalities. They share the Lakeland Central School District, for example, which The Yorktown Examiner has been covering since Day One. And like many sisters, Cortlandt and Yorktown share similar traits. They are geographically expansive municipalities, and at first glance, both seem decidedly quiet and largely residential with very different demographics than, say, neighboring Peekskill. They share Route 6 and Route 202/35, major commercial corridors with significant traffic issues.
Like sisters, Cortlandt and Yorktown can sometimes suffer from a bit of sibling rivalry. When the idea of merging the Yorktown Police Department with Westchester County came about, Yorktown residents naturally looked toward Cortlandt, which had done the same thing years before. Even just a few weeks ago, while discussing fire inspectors, Yorktown decided to take a page from the Cortlandt model. Also, some developers, finding Yorktown’s planning process too cumbersome, have turned to Cortlandt instead.
And just as Yorktown and Cortlandt cannot escape the comparisons, we now feel it would be difficult to escape covering both towns. In a way, avoiding Cortlandt coverage over the past five or so months has started to feel contrived. To put it another way, in covering Cortlandt, we’re providing more context for Yorktown readers to digest their town’s local news, not less. And visa versa.
While we’re adding a new municipality to our coverage area, let us stress a major point to our Yorktown readers: Our Yorktown coverage won’t diminish. You might share some space on the front page with a neighbor, but we won’t neglect you as we also try to broaden our coverage of the area’s local governments, education systems and sports scenes.
We take some comfort in what we did state in our opening Yorktown Examiner editorial:
“Now, we are not so myopic to believe that we can only serve Yorktown by exclusively publishing stories that exist within narrow municipal borders. Residents aren’t so provincial...But, for now, our lens, on these pages, is focused on Yorktown.”
That lens will now be examining an additional town government, an additional school district and additional police news. And, for purposes of full disclosure, at this point future growth in the near future appears almost inevitable. Even the name of this newspaper is something we might at some point need to alter. But ultimately, as always—and fittingly—you’ll be the ones to guide us on that decision and most others. Let us know what you think. Write us at letters@theexaminernews.com.
EXAMINER EDITORIAL
THE YORKTOWN EXAMINER, VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
December 15, 2009
The Yorktown Examiner: A Newspaper For Your Community
In September of 2007, a group of veteran Westchester County-based journalists hatched the crazy idea that the marketplace, despite popular belief, remained thirsty for local news packaged in a weekly print newspaper. They believed that readers wanted something—made of good old-fashioned pulp—to crack open once a week (perhaps with their morning coffee) to learn about their local government. That readers wanted something—folded open in front of them, away from a computer screen—to learn about their local school board. That readers wanted something—something they could hold—to learn about their local sports. And not just to learn. To entertain. To read about an interesting business. An interesting neighbor. To absorb the world around them. To know—to better understand—the thing that ties us together: community.
So, a little more than two years ago, The Examiner was born. Since then we’ve been covering the news of your Westchester neighbors to the south, and then earlier this year, sensing a void in Putnam County, we launched an edition there as well. Today, we arrive in Yorktown.
Why? After all, there are existing print and broadcast media outlets which already serve northern Westchester and serve it with distinction. Why, then, have we arrived? The answer is a simple one: You deserve it.
It might not seem so at first glance, but Yorktown is one of the busiest and most important communities in the region. At approximately 40 square miles, Yorktown is vast. It has five business hamlets and dips into four school districts. It is rich with history that spans centuries. Encased in all of this are Yorktown’s more than 36,000 residents, each one of them with their own story. The end result, of course, is that Yorktown is deep and heavy with news. It’s exactly the sort of place where a local paper can grow and flourish.
The newspaper industry as a whole is sinking on a burning ship. Newspapers across the country are downsizing on a weekly basis. Print media empires are crumbling and papers that just 10 years ago looked as though they could exist forever are now having to die slow, humiliating deaths.
To date, our success has been rooted in a focus on the basics, the fundamentals. We’re not reinventing the wheel. There’s no secret sauce. Not much of what we do is innovative, in the traditional sense of the word, but our attention to one task, producing a newspaper jam-packed with local news, has captured the attention of our audience.
While others search for a new model, we’re using the old one. It might be counterintuitive. But it has worked. It has allowed our ship to navigate the choppy waters.
We’ve assembled and taken into our ranks some like-minded and familiar individuals, from photographer Stan Gitner and cartoonist Dan Capozzi to freelance features reporter Rick Pezzullo. From Assistant Editor Martin Wilbur to veteran sportswriter Ray Gallagher. From reporters Jim Roberts, Neal Rentz and Sam Barron to Abby Luby and Joan Gaylord, all of these newspaper journalists share a wealth of experience covering northern Westchester. We’ve also banded together a group of outstanding contributing columnists who come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Yorktown’s Bill Primavera writes our Home Guru real estate column while Pleasantville’s Nick Antonaccio produces our wine column. Together, we hope to make The Yorktown Examiner a fun, lively and informative read each time you open the paper. In this week’s debut edition, reporter Joseph Griffith looks into the rise in town tax grievances. Bill Demarest interviews Yorktown’s Andrew Spano, whose final day as county executive is fast approaching. Editor-in-Chief Anna Lillian Moser pens a story about local author and self-marketing mastermind Michael Balkind.
Although we will continue to focus our attention on the print newspaper, Examiner Media has been slowly pulled into the 21st century. If you follow @examinerstone on Twitter, you’ll be alerted of what’s cooking for our upcoming edition, and be reminded of what we’ve covered in that week’s paper. Also, you’ll be notified of upcoming community events. We have nearly 1,000 followers on Twitter, and are one of the most closely monitored news outlets on Twitter in the area. This week, we have launched a new Examiner Media Facebook fan page. And our Web site, www.theexaminernews.com, which features our Twitter posts, has just received a makeover.
Now, we are not so myopic to believe that we can only serve Yorktown by exclusively publishing stories that exist within narrow municipal borders. Residents aren’t so provincial. You might be interested in the grand opening of a new business in Somers. The human interest story in Cortlandt. A weekend community event in Ossining. A big story about Indian Point out of Buchanan. The history feature about Verplank. The regional issue that surfaced in Mount Kisco. The independent filmmaker in Pleasantville. How the Mahopac and Carmel sports teams are faring. So we will distribute The Yorktown Examiner to your neighbors, and work with advertisers in the surrounding area to develop mutually beneficial relationships. And we won’t resist all possible future growth. After all, when we launched in 2007, we covered just two communities and are now serving more than a dozen between our Westchester and Putnam editions. But, for now, our lens, on these pages, is focused on Yorktown.
As we’ve stated from the start, first in the Mount Kisco area and south, and later with The Putnam Examiner, which launched in March, Small News Is Big News, as our motto asserts. But that small news we chronicle is your news. And this isn’t our community—it’s yours. So be in touch. We’re eager to hear from you. Happy holidays.
storyideas@theexaminernews.com
EXAMINER EDITORIAL
THE EXAMINER, VOLUME 3 ISSUE 105
September 8, 2009
The Examiner Turns Two and Says Thank You
Two years ago this week (9/8/09) --and a year before the economy collapsed--The Examiner's improbable story began. Our paper was born on a simple but defiant premise: in the Internet Age, when information can be abundant but overwhelming, when information can be omnipresent but irrelevant, readers are thirsty for meaningful stories pertinent to their lives.
We're heartened to thank you, 105 weeks later, for proving this point true. A truth that says far less about our insight than it does about your virtues--valuing your community, the printed word and a thoughtful chronicling of civic affairs in your neighborhood. It has been observed that local newspaper reporters are the figurative foot soldiers of our democracy. That makes you, the community newspaper reader, our commanding officer. From the mundane and the ridiculous to headier stories on tragedy and triumph, you have guided our path and monitored your community with keen and admirable interest.
Because of your response, the business community quickly took note. And despite a cratering of the larger, watered-down newspaper industry's revenue stream, and despite the larger economic collapse, advertisers recognized your interest, and therefore, the value of exposure in your newspaper. And with that, we've been able to fund this optimistic experiment. In fact, our circulation has soared since our launch, as has our staff and coverage area. In March, we introduced ourselves a county north, launching The Putnam Examiner, and the growth there has mirrored our successes here in Westchester. In fact, with the publication of today's editions, we have increased our circulation once again, and have reached the 10,000 mark--2,000 papers were printed when we debuted. We might have launched that first edition in September of 2007, but you have nurtured The Examiner ever since. So we thank you as we celebrate a two-year anniversary--a birthday defined and shaped by your remarkable and humbling care.
EXAMINER EDITORIAL
THE EXAMINER, VOLUME 2 ISSUE 54
September 9, 2009
The Examiner: Our History is Your History
Fifty three weeks ago, The Examiner, in making its debut, published a pair of front pages, with a maiden Mount Kisco edition featuring the historic indictment of a town cop and a Pleasantville cover showcasing an item about an unrealized plan to install an upscale eatery in a prized piece of corner real estate.
Needless to say, a lot happens in a year.
Since The Examiner’s launch in September of last year, that cop was pronounced not guilty of manslaughter, that prized piece of real estate was handed to a controversial Dunkin’ Donuts and The Examiner, behind the weight of humbling support from our readership, has been granted the opportunity to bear witness to 365 days in the life of our slice of suburbia.
From budget battles in Bedford schools, to Panther pride in Pleasantville, a group of journalists consisting largely of outsiders has taken on the charge of being the chroniclers of your local history—one week at a time—and has been greeted, by and large, with respect and encouragement.
In our own short history, there has also been news to report. Shortly after adding coverage of Chappaqua in the third quarter of our first year, The Examiner retooled its format, abandoning the original two-edition configuration, and now packs a week of our worlds into a unified paper, totaling 28 or so pages a week.
By summertime, Mount Pleasant coverage was expanded beyond Pleasantville’s village borders, and into the town’s deserving hamlets. Now, as we enter our second year, and print our 53rd issue, The Examiner is, for the first time, publishing 5,000 copies. A year ago, circulation totaled 2,000.
Yes, the year has produced plenty of change, but it has also proven that certain constants persist: small town America, like it has since our founding, desires intense local coverage of its happenings. Happenings that are understandably trivial to outsiders. Happenings that are at the same time the lifeblood of American communities—the fireman’s parade, the little league game, the budget vote, the stuff that, patched together, are what define our neighborhoods, our families, our lives. The stuff we’ve written about and photographed over the past year.
Periodically, The Examiner, after having made critical decisions involving change or expansion, has returned to passages from its opening editorial.
It seems fitting then on this occasion to remind our readers—and ourselves—of the newspaper’s early promise to “to examine...your community’s nooks and crannies,” and to, “unearth the evasive truth.” Not everything we publish, of course, is that high minded. But this platform does provide a place for the voiceless—or at least those who feel voiceless—to turn to, and seek justice.
This week, on our cover, an employee of the Mount Pleasant Water and Sewer Department and the Chappaqua library airs his grievances about alleged age discrimination. The validity of his claim remains unclear. Surely, in being responsible for printing the first chapter of local history, this story will unfold on these pages. And a year from now, as in the case of the indicted Mount Kisco cop, or that prized piece of Pleasantville real estate, the complete story might remain elusive, but we’ll do our best to report as much truth as we can unearth. As we originally promised.
Local newspaper legend, Horace Greeley, once stated: “We cannot afford to reject unexamined any idea which proposes to improve the moral, intellectual, or social condition of mankind.”
In that tradition, in that spirit, trust that we will continue to examine the small news—your news—that is, for us and for you, big news. In less than 60 days, media worldwide will report on news as big as it gets—our country’s presidential election results. It is critical for all of us, of course, to study the candidates.
On these pages, however, be prepared in the coming months for intense coverage of the people who want to represent your state assembly, state senate and congressional districts. If, in an informed way, we are to think global and act local, then there must be the information available to do so intelligently. So we have our role.
We hope you will keep reading.
And we promise to keep writing.
Be in touch.
EXAMINER EDITORIAL
Debut Edition
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
September 11, 2007
A Contract with our Communities
Print is dead. That’s the conventional wisdom these days. We don’t embrace
that mindless mantra. Here’s how we hope to shatter it:
We’re here to publish community newspapers. To tell you what’s happening
within the corridors of your village or town hall. To tell you what’s
happening within the doors of your school buildings. Within the white
lines of your athletic fields. To tell you what’s happening within the
unchecked crevices of your neighborhoods. We’re here to write true stories.
The true stories of Mount Kisco and Pleasantville.
We’re here to photograph your triumphs—to chronicle your tragedies, pay
tribute to your good deeds, and capture your misdeeds.
To examine—thoroughly investigate—your community’s nooks and crannies.
To unearth the evasive truth. To offer you a mirror, shaped as a newspaper.
We’re here to solicit advertising. And we’re not ashamed to say it. We’re
here to say that we want your business ventures to succeed. We’re also
here to say we will unflinchingly spotlight our advertisers’ missteps.
We’re here to support you. And keep an eye on you. We’re here to say
journalistic integrity and business integrity can be achieved simultaneously.
We’re not here to feverishly update blogs on a content-obsessed Web site.
We’re not here to stream video. Or podcast. Or any other distractions
from our basic and simple goal: Report the news. And report it in a way
you’ve been missing. In a way you’ve been craving. Craving for too long.
We are here to hear from you. We want to print your angry letters. Even—or
perhaps especially—when your angry letters are directed at us. And we
want to know if you’re angry at your elected officials. Your police department.
Your school district. We want to print your praiseful letters. Not ones
about us. Ones about your elected officials. Your police department.
Your school district.
We want you to tell us what you think is news. We might not always agree.
We always want to listen.
We’re also here to have fun. To print a weekly commuter column. To publish
a snarky TV column. To tell you about good food, good wine, good movies.
To remind you in our community calendar where to have fun. And where
to have it near home.
Newspapers aren’t dead. They’ll only perish if those who run them suffocate
them. We’re not here to synergize. We’re here to energize.
We’re here to make your week a bit more entertaining. More informative.
More substantive. We’re here to go back to basics. And we’re here to
stay.
Lastly, we’re here to say this is the first and last time you’ll hear
about us.
We’re ready to hear from you.
Starting now.
Write back: examinerletters@theexaminernews.com
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