Daily Hampshire Gazette marks 225 years as news delivery changes rapidly
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NORTHAMPTON — Two hundred and twenty-five years ago today, on Sept. 6, 1786, a 22-year-old named William Butler cranked up a printing press in Northampton and let it run.
Under a masthead that read "The Hampshire Gazette" and directly below a headline that said "To the Public," Butler - the first editor of the newspaper you hold in your hands today and, by extension, of GazetteNET.com - addressed his readers.
"By the advice and encouragement of a number of Gentlemen in this County," Butler, having worked as an apprentice printer in Hartford, wrote that he had established "a printing office in Northampton."
Newspapers, Butler wrote, had helped bring the new country into being. The danger, he added, was that "peace and tranquility will produce inattention" to important issues of the day and "our minds will sink into that indolence which is natural to such a fate ..."
Births, marriages, deaths
For 225 years, the Gazette, one of the country's oldest newspapers, has chronicled life in Hampshire and southern Franklin counties - or, to borrow Butler's words, has tried to keep the local citizenry from sinking into indolence.
For two and a quarter centuries it has tracked local politics, business openings and closings, schools, religious communities, weather, social movements, births, marriages and deaths.
Today, Gazette Editor Larry Parnass says, the paper and the website operate in a media culture in which "anybody with anything to say can publish it - and millions of people are doing just that. We're in an allegation culture, too. But you can also be addled by all of that, and I think it's a spur to newspapers like the Gazette to help people organize all that information."
Today's anniversary is a chance to cast a backward glance at the paper's beginnings - and to take a longer look at the complex environment in which it now exists alongside news websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, and a punishing economic recession.
"There's no question that it's a struggle now," said Karen List, director of the journalism program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
"Newspapers are still the major source of significant reporting in this country, and that reporting is crucial to a working democracy," she said.
"I think that's especially true at the local level. If the New York Times misses a story about Congress, the Washington Post might pick it up," List added. "But if a local paper misses an important government story, it most likely will go unreported - and we all lose if that happens."
List said community papers today are buffeted by the same changes that have affected many big papers around the country, shuttering some and forcing others to downsize.
"Many community papers have begun to publish fewer local stories and more national wire stories, which are cheaper," she said. "Some are no longer high-quality papers because they can't put enough reporters on the street to cover their communities in a meaningful way."
Ed Shanahan, the Gazette's editor from 1971 to 1986, said today's anniversary indeed takes place at "a watershed period" for print journalism. Still, Shanahan said he believes the Gazette's deep roots and its strong relationship with readers have served it well and put it in a good position to continue.
Over many decades, Shanahan said, the Gazette has evolved from offering "rudimentary" coverage of the basics to delving into complex areas of reader interest, such as the environment, the regional economy and the arts. Local readers expect and want that, he said, and would likely not be satisfied with less.
In ways, readers now have access to more local news than ever before, thanks to the surge in hyper-local news sites on the Internet. And that's a development, some say, that offers hope for the news industry in all its forms.
"I don't think it's a good idea if there's just one news source in a community," said Mary Serreze, who founded Northampton Media, a website that focuses on this city's news. She believes all the players today are increasing the audience for local news.
"That's going to help all of us. As the competition for ad dollars becomes more fierce, we're all going to be forced to collaborate," Serreze said. "I actually think there's a lot of potential there - a rising tide lifts all boats."
Rabble rousers
According to a history of the Gazette written by Ruth Zenick for the paper's bicentennial in 1986, the paper was created during the popular revolt known as Shays' Rebellion, a conflict that pitted poor, struggling, debt-burdened farmers against the local elites who took a dim view of the farmers' complaints.
Though many of their names have been lost to history, the 1986 account made clear that the paper's early financial backers were members of that elite: "'Biased' is almost too gentle a word to describe the Gazette's unbridled attack on the farmers' rebellion," Zenick wrote.
Kerry Buckley, director of Historic Northampton, says the early Gazettes "relied on actual 'correspondents,' that is, letters written by subscribers - sometimes using pseudonyms, especially if scoring incendiary political points. So the 18th-century Gazettes sometimes resemble a blog - a collection of observations and commentaries - with sharp ripostes and barbed replies going back and forth."
They make for "a great read," Buckley said, "and the political invective makes today's partisans sound deferential in comparison."
Local focus
Today, the newspaper's mission is "stories that make people aware of what life is like here," says Parnass, who succeeded Jim Foudy as editor in 2009.
The job of writing, editing, photographing, designing and archiving those stories in print and online is now handled by an editorial staff of 36 full-time people, Parnass said, plus about six part-time people.
The editorial staff is about one-third less than it was some 20 years ago, he said, a reduction that reflects attrition, reorganization and layoffs.
And while those are losses the paper feels, the staff remains at"a healthy number" for a newspaper with a circulation of roughly 18,000, Parnass said. He cited the industry standard of one editorial employee for every 1,000 in circulation.
The Gazette's bicentennial history described the Gazette, then co-owned by brothers Charles DeRose and Peter DeRose, as one of a "shrinking" number of independent, family-owned newspapers. In 2005, that number shrank yet again, when Peter DeRose announced the sale of the paper to Newspapers of New England Inc., a regional, privately owned company based in Concord, N.H.
At the time of the sale, NNE pledged to leave the Gazette's local focus intact and, six years later, that hasn't changed.
"There are a lot of people writing about 'out there,' but not many reporting on here, and that's what we're about," Parnass said. "Our audience is people who want to know about the forces that shape their lives, the challenges they face, and the ways they can work together."
Not that readers are in lockstep about what they want.
"I've talked to readers over the years who are totally split on how much national and world news they want in the Gazette," Parnass said. "Some say, I buy the paper to read about my neighborhood. Others, though less so recently, say, this is also my source of national and international news."
Within the category of local coverage, Parnass said he seeks a mix of enterprising, unique stories that provide context and what he terms the "more granular news of immediate value."
Parnass says no single news organization today is a "one-stop shop. The great bounty of our time is that there are so many ways to put together a news diet - and we want to be on that plate."
Launched in 1996, GazetteNET.com drew 1.3 million unique visitors in the year ending Aug. 1, Parnass said. Unique visitors are counted only once no matter how many times they return to a website.
"We feel that every day our website draws readers and our print edition loses readers. It's a slow changeover. (In numbers), far more people are reading print than are going to the website, but the Web only grows every day. We still haven't done enough to use the technology the web allows, particularly in social networking."
As the Gazette continues to build its online presence, Parnass said, print may not be a forever thing, though he said he finds it hard to envision it disappearing altogether. It may continue, he said, to be the best way to present longer-form journalism pieces that "aren't so much fun to read on your phone."
Digging in
About five years ago, Mary Serreze, who formerly worked in the Gazette's IT department, started up Northampton Media, a local news website that grew out of her fascination with technology, local news and issues. Serreze said the motivation was also a desire "to really dig, break stories, get public documents up on the Web. I felt there was a real thirst for hyper-local news - the hotel, Exit 19, the landfill ...." Serreze and David Reid, a former daily news reporter, are the chief writers.
Serreze said she sees Northampton Media and the Gazette as friendly competitors with two distinct missions that sometimes overlap. Serreze said she doesn't see websites like hers and newspapers like the Gazette or Springfield Republican as locked into an either-or conflict.
"Our focus is narrow - elections, City Hall, the Board of Public Works. We can never compete with the Gazette in covering every little thing, but what we do cover, we cover in depth."
As the Gazette starts its 226th year, longtime readers and observers of the newspaper scene say they're uncertain how all the changes unleashed by the digital age will shake out.
"What form it all takes 10 years from now, I have no idea," Shanahan, the former editor, said.
Easthampton Mayor Michael Tautznik, whose tools for communicating with constituents now include a blog, Facebook, email, cable access TV - and a newspaper - said he still thinks newspapers are in the best position to offer context and detail. They're still an unchanging part of his daily routine, he said, though he wonders if they will be able to attract new generations of readers.
"I still read newspapers, but I don't know many people in their 30s who do," he said.
Rutherford Platt, of Florence, a retired UMass professor of geology and occasional Gazette columnist, said the newspaper provides a forum for discussion and debate. It celebrates individuals who may or may not be locally well-known, he said; it chooses and follows topics like bullying in the schools that have local and national implications and it provides a means for businesses and groups to publicize themselves.
A newspaper like the Gazette, he said, can provide "background, thoughtful consideration, interpretation and good writing."
At their best, newspapers promote community, he said. "I do think that's underappreciated."
Suzanne Wilson can be reached at swilson@gazettenet.com.
Comments
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I read many newspapers most on-line. I have moved from Hamp to Oakland CA and still read the Gazette first thing in the morning. I find it one of the best around. Keep up the good work.