Not that long ago, the letters to the editor section was one of the most vibrant and seemingly best read parts of the Newton TAB. During my more than a decade there the biggest struggle for editors was finding a way to fit all of that week’s correspondence into two pages, along with a seemly endless flood of requests to submit oped columns from various community members.
Last week’s paper didn’t include a single local letter, local column or local editorial (not to mention the local cartoons once provided by Mark Marderosian which disappeared more than a year ago even though he was drawing them for free!)
That’s been pretty much par for the course these days (even though this is essentially free content for GateHouse Media.)
But is that because people have stopped submitting them? Or is it because the paper has stopped publishing them?
Has any one out there submitted a letter or local column lately? Was it published?
I have also noticed the lack of letters in the Tab recently. It’s hard to believe that, in a community of such diverse viewpoints and passionate and knowledgeable people, no one elected to write a letter in the past couple off weeks. It doesn’t say much for the future of local journalism.
It is really sad that we have such little coverage. This is not just a Newton problem, but it is particularly glaring here. We are a city of nearly 90,000 that is serviced by 2 reporters, one who I believe covers Newton part time at the Patch and one of which is doing yeoman’s work trying to keep the TAB alive with any semblance of local coverage.
How does a government and community operate in the dark?
I submitted an article to the Tab last week on zoning and was told it was too long to publish and was asked to cut it down to 750 words. I opted not to cut it down and it was not published.
The TAB is only successful at delivering plastic trash to my doorstep each week. If instead they invested in a good website, I’d read it. V14 is way better and gets by with probably pennies compared to that bureaucracy at the TAB!
I haven’t opened the Tab in years. I come to V14 and usually if there’s something worth reading on the Tab there’s a discussion about it here. It’s a shame not only because we have essentially lost our paper, but also because it’s a waste of paper and plastic.
Used to be a frequent letter writer to the TAB, but figured so much fewer are reading it due to the internet that not worth the effort. That seems the case with newspapers across the country.
BTW, along with what Greg Reibman notes, the TAB’s letters were (at least to me) the best part and generated lively debate, to which I sometimes contributed, sometimes making a point with a bit of tongue-in-cheek as when I proposed that the statue in front of City Hall be rededicated to a friend of mine, Len Mead, known around town for his efforts on behalf of the Newton Taxpayers Assn. — and boy did it generate a slew of reply letters.
For what it’s worth, when there is a hot topic or a special vote on the table, a lot of letters get submitted and published. See opt-out and Washington Street developments.
@Brenda Noel: I’m very surprised to hear that the Tab says no to free content, let alone from a city councilor.
The rantings of an old man: We marvel at all the new and glitzy communications tools and resources that have evolved over the past two decades, but our ability to communicate effectively with each other or with the community at large is a pale reflection of what it used to be. Here are some, but certainly not all of the reasons.
(1) Village 14 is the only truly citywide communications resource left in Newton, but the overwhelming majority of people in this City don’t even know it exists. Nobody outside of those I work with in community projects has ever read anything I’ve ever posted.
(2) The Newton TAB is,for all intents and purposes, a defunct publication. It isn’t Julie Cohen’s fault. I’m amazed she is even able to get out the very truncated weekly edition that lands on my doorstep each week. Just 10 years ago, I used to regularly write letters to the TAB and just about all of my immediate neighbors would let me know they read it. Not anymore.
(3) 15 or even 10 years ago, I could telephone voters in my ward for a political candidate or community issue and get through to most of them. Now, it is virtually impossible to do this in any systematic manner. People are getting so many solicitation type phone calls on their landlines that they just don’t pick up and more often than not they will erase it before listening. I do the same. And, of course, most people are like me. They don’t give out their cell number to people they don’t know.
(4) Email has evolved to have many of the same difficulties with overload.
(5) First class letters and door-to-door leafleting are also far less effective than they used to be. Each week, they arrive at my house accompanied by literally piles of junk mail, advertisements and promotions.
The upshot of all this is that few of us (including me) read things nearly as carefully as we once did because we are deluged each day with communications from many sources. Too many people and too many institutions and factions can intrude on our privacy with virtually no impunity. Don’t even get me started on social media, twitter, political websites, smart phones and all the city consultants that put out reports, plans, studies and sugar coated power point presentations that, too often, try and make us think we are participating in substantive decision making when really we are not. We no longer think as one community because we no longer think or communicate as one community. There was a time when I think we did a better job of this because we weren’t so overloaded with information and so constrained about time.
I’ve taken the only step I know to deal with this conundrum. I’m only reading what I have to read as a Highlands Area Council and I’ve spent a lot of the past six months rereading Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau to put more balance back into my life. It works.
I requested that the Tab stop delivering to my house about two years ago when I realized that I hadn’t opened it in several years. What the corporation has done to the local media is a real shame – I used to read every section weekly and often wrote letters to the editor.
I don’t know the answer but the demise of a robust local media is having a detrimental effect on the community.
@Greg. Yes, and although it was delivered Friday, they opted to hold it for a week in favor of all the regional —I will call it “stuff”
And it WAS under 750 words
It’s not up to Julie Cohen; it’s centralized now.
The GateHouse Media business model, for those not familiar with it: Purchase dying small daily newspapers (as well as some weekly groups), claim the inherited revenue as “new growth” (thus bolstering the stock price), then reduce expenses through deep staff cuts and centralization. It’s almost a Ponzi scheme, with a hedge fund at the top.
It’s of course entirely legal, though whether it is ethical I suppose depends on your perspective. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror any longer, which is why I left a year ago.
Newton deserves much, much better. I eagerly anticipate the day GateHouse declares bankruptcy (again) and this time folds. Hopefully by that time there will be a legitimate news outlet here, serving a public in dire need of information. Indeed, there is a local group persevering to make this happen. I hope this endeavor will be supported by the community.
@Andy – I have been so excited since I first heard some people were working on a new news source. If that pans out, I will sing its praises from the rooftops, it is desperately needed.
@Andy: Can you tell us what the possibility for a new publishing paradigm is, or is it secret? I hope it is not a disguised arm of any particular political party and is open to seeking a deep understanding of the distracted-by-life community’s viewpoints along with the “annointeds” who might or might not represent their desires!
In our house, we refer to the TAB as the 3:15…..3 minutes read to 15 pages.
Certainly, local newspapers are struggling these days, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. As I travel around the region, I always seek out local papers. And there are plenty from towns and cities, from the Cape to Vermont, with much smaller populations and commercial (advertising) bases that manage to produce weeklies that are far more robust than the TAB. Even some of our smaller neighbors – Watertown and Wellesley, for example – have decent sustainable independent on-line news outlets. Julie Cohen is a competent journalist, but a city of Newton’s size and complexity needs 5 Julies to give it the appropriate coverage (and an actual editor would be nice too).
@Sallee
It’s a very diverse group with non-partisanship as a primary objective. We have V14 for exchanging opinions (along with some information).
What Newton lacks is even one investigative reporter. It would be terrific to eventually have several of them.
Right now the project is in its earliest stages. While I am not the most intimately involved, I’m optimistic the community will eventually have a legitimate digital news source to rely on.
The TAB has gone the way of the Ford Edsel. It’s become a rag not even worth the paper it’s printed on.
It’s time for someone to resurrect our local Newspaper. Even the days of the Newton Graphic were far superior.
As for the online Newton Tab’s op-ed and editorial pages, right now you will find generic articles of supposed national interest by Rick Holmes and a horoscope by Chris Flisher! I kid you not.
For years, I contributed pieces freely to the Tab when the spirit moved me or when an editor requested that I cover some topic, particularly concerning education. I was one of many local voices, devoted residents of the Garden City. In exchange, I managed to develop a readership both online and in hard copy. Apparently, some of my pieces got published outside of Newton; I occasionally received some great correspondence from folks around the Commonwealth.
It all changed under the new regime, which acted like the pharaoh that didn’t know Joseph. I was lucky to receive an email in response to my submissions, and the Tab refused to print my stories online. My only option: submit pieces and leave the rest to the discretion of the publishers. I stopped writing for the Tab in response. Now I occasionally write for Village 14, and I thank Greg Reibman for the privilege.
I agree with Ann. It’s amazing that in other parts of New England -,with fewer resources and less affluent readerships – local papers are doing relatively well in terms of local news and opinion. Plenty of local stories, letters to the editor and detailed coverage of high school sports. Rhode Island in particular has a good number of very active local papers that provide better news coverage than the Providence Journal. What’s even more amazing is that some of these local papers are also corporate owned. So it really is an indictment of GateHouse that they are allowing the Tab to disintegrate. I hope whatever local news model being developed to replace/complement the Tab succeeds.
This was my Jan 30 letter to the editor, obviously not published:
To the Editor:
I am annoyed, and somewhat saddened, by the recent change in the editorial pages of the TAB. Since at least 2002, when I moved here, I could count on a weekly editorial from the editor; this week’s edition had a generic article on sports betting and the masthead doesn’t even list an editor. The Op-Ed submissions were always focused matters of local interest, or general opinion and commentary from Newtonites, sometimes unreadable or controversial, but always local. This week, we get an article from a Sherborn pastor (marginally local), and a fluff piece from Elaine Heffner, who might as well be from Mars. Most importantly, the editorial pages were always full of letters commenting on the issues of the day. I find it hard to believe that with zoning reform, the Mark Development juggernaut, snowstorms, bike share, Northland, schools, and transportation, that there was only one (1!) letter worthy of printing. The TAB needs to shape up, for all our sakes.
Great letter Scott. Back in the day, we would give priority to letters that were critical of our coverage.
But even if GateHouse won’t do that, I’m still puzzled why they’ve stopped publishing all the free local content about local issues.
I didn’t like when they cut staff but at least I intellectually understood that. This makes no sense. And their remaining local advertisers should be furious.
@Andy Levin. Best wishes with this worthy project and please save a few lines for me before I lapse into my final dotage. I so miss not having you at the TAB and I didn’t have to agree with everything you wrote to appreciate your honesty, integrity and openness.
@Bob
Thanks. I’ll pass on your best wishes to those who are really doing the hard work.
@Andy: What Bob said! Although Bob Burke will never slip into any final dotage!!!! I expect him to spread his wisdom for many decades to come and when he does leave us, sometime in the next century, I expect his tombstone to read: “I told you so!”
We lament the state of local newspapers, but journalists need to eat too. While we shop at Amazon, Home Depot and Targét, the life blood of local newspaper revenue – the mom & pop stores – cannot afford to advertise. We all play a part in that.
And the rub on “free content” is that by nature (and generally speaking), is not free. The price is the writer’s option – on an issue, debate, candidate, etc. Even (especially) here on V14.
I did submit a LTE – may have been the last one published two weeks ago on our need for a greater diversity of Newton housing.