by Alex Brooks, Publisher
It was only last Friday that we heard about the demise of the Independent newspaper, and we began to get calls from a number of different people urging us to expand into New Lebanon to take up the task that the Independent had suddenly laid down.
We have had subscribers and advertisers in New Lebanon for years, and we have been publishing items of New Lebanon news for many years also, things like the Shatford Little League, the New Lebanon Seniors news, The Mountain Road School events, the combined Berlin/New Lebanon sports teams, Tannery Pond concerts, Theater Barn offerings, church news and the like. But with our small staff, we have until now refrained from making the leap into covering the town the way we do our other five towns in Rensselaer County.
For many years, people in Stephentown have told us that New Lebanon and Stephentown, although they have different school districts and are in different counties, are in many ways well integrated socially and commercially and they ought to be under the same news umbrella. One could learn that from George Holcomb, a Stephentown resident who did much of his business in New Lebanon and whose journal we publish.
With this issue we begin covering the New Lebanon Town Board, which has designated us as one of its two official papers. We hope this will be the beginning of a greatly expanded relationship between us and the residents and business people of New Lebanon. We are looking for a part-time reporter able and willing to cover evening meetings, because we are resolved not to spread ourselves too thin, nor to diminish in any way our coverage of our other five towns as we add coverage of New Lebanon. If you are a capable writer and would be interested in doing some local reporting, please get in touch with us.
Our brand of journalism involves fostering a community conversation. It thrives on community participation. We urge the citizens of New Lebanon to use our newspaper and web site as a way to communicate with each other. Send us write-ups and pictures of events that you are involved in. If you have thoughts on community issues, send us a letter to the editor. If you have comments or questions, feel free to call us. We may not be able to cover every event or to publish everything that is sent to us, but if there is one thing we have learned from doing this for fifteen years, it is that vibrant community journalism happens only when the community responds and gets involved with the newspaper. We look forward to developing our new relationship with the New Lebanon community.