Small newspapers still shape political outcomes—more than most people realize.
For most of the twentieth century, that claim would not have required much defense. Local newspapers were everywhere. They covered city councils, schools, elections. They created a shared understanding of what was happening and what it meant.
Today, most of them are gone.
And with them has gone something less visible but more important: a sustained way of seeing and shaping civic life over time.
For more than three decades, I have owned and edited a weekly newspaper inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway—the Falls Church News-Press. For more than 1,800 consecutive weeks, the paper has appeared without interruption.
People sometimes ask how I have managed to keep that going.
I usually tell them that one of these days I am going to have to get a real job.
But the truth is simpler.