What does a liberal do when he or she lives in a one-newspaper town and that one newspaper is constantly printing reactionary claptrap, Tea Party ramblings, and anti-Obama commentary? You could cancel your subscription, but then where would you find the news about the demise of Lehighton’s Bike Night, or the firing of the Palmerton basketball coach, or Lansford’s near bankruptcy?
One possible answer to this problem is suggested in the latest issue of the New Yorker in an article by Peter J. Boyer entitled “Fox Among the Chickens.” Mr. Boyer looks at recent events in Cold Springs, New York.
Cold Springs a small town 50 miles up river from Manhattan, was home to the Putnam County News @ Recorder, a small privately-owned newspaper that emphasized local news. In July 2008 Roger Ailes, the chair of Fox News, bought the paper and gave it to his wife. She, being the wife of Roger Ailes, turned the paper into a forum for anti-Obama editorials and nasty critiques of local activities that offended the Ailes’s sensibilities.
Some residents, disgusted with the new tone of the paper, formed the “Full Moon Project” to discuss publishing an alternative newspaper. The big problem was the cost, but another was finding people to report news--almost everybody wanted to write opinion columns only.
The alternative that finally developed was an online newspaper, Philipstown.info, funded by one man for $100,000 a year. Most of the e-paper’s reporters were hired away from the Fox newspaper. The new paper did not replace the Fox paper, but citizens now have an alternative source of objective news.
Does anybody have $100,000 stuffed into a coffee can somewhere?
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