After reading the article in today’s Boston Globe about the yoga disputes I had a look at their Newton page.
A few years back, the Boston Globe made a concerted effort to up it’s coverage of all things Newton and now has a Newton page in the on-line Globe and a Newton specific email newsletter. They partnered with Boston University’s School of Journalism and since then a combination of BU students and Globe staff have vastly expanded their Newton coverage.
For those who lament the Tab’s greatly reduced coverage of local news in recent years, consider signing up for the Boston Globe and lend some support for local Newton news coverage,
Here’s a sampling of what’s on the Newton page today:
- Newtonians take initiative to clean up their city
- Newton begins building of temporary replacement of destroyed Ablemarle Foortbridge
- COVID-19 testing, district goals are focus of Newton School Committee
- Newton City Council approves life sciences for Riverside mixed-use development
- ‘Newton Hires offers cash bonuses for jobless, under-employed workers to fill part time jobs
- Newton considers more than $1 million in athletic field improvements
- Newton launching study to help guide use of American Rescue Plan funds
- Newton talks about rats and how to reduce them
- Newton mayor designating $125,000 in federal COVID funds for local arts
The students are doing a great job. I guess the challenge is how to get those articles onto the screens of Newton residents. I get them summarized in an email titled “The Newton Report”, but I don’t remember how I signed up for it.
BTW, I find that people mostly lament the loss of local coverage after their preferred candidate (or issue) lose in a vote.
You can sign up for The Newton Report here.
fivethirtyeight just ran a very interesting podcast about the demise of local news coverage. One of the guests was Elaine Godfrey of The Atlantic, who wrote a piece about her home town newspaper in Burlington, Iowa. I’m sharing it here because at some point she describes how their paper got acquired by Gatehouse, started slowly shrinking, and today comprises one or two local items and a lot of syndicated fluff. The similarity to the Newton Tab is striking.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/local-news-is-vanishing-what-does-that-mean-for-american-politics/