How One Little Newspaper Gives Me Hope Even When Hope Seems Impossible
Living Happy
Some of you probably know by now that Shaun and I have created a local digital newspaper called the Bar Harbor Story that we basically make no money at. That’s not quite true, but it’s definitely not enough to live on right now.
So, you might wonder, why would you do such a thing?
Because we’re dumb.
No! No! Just kidding.
We were seeing a lot of hate in our community and though we have a lovely award-winning paper, it has paywalls that other news sources and gossip sources didn’t. And it felt like the bias was hurting our community.
And here’s the thing. We’ve done nothing to market this site other than occasionally say on our personal Facebook accounts, “Hey! We have this site!” and sharing the posts there and on Instagram. We now have over 190,000 views a month. For some of you, that doesn’t seem like a big deal. But our town only has about 5,000 residents. We have more than half that number as subscribers who get our news stories and features in their emails every single day.
This isn’t about us, though, this post.
This post is about hope.
A lot of people avoid the news, but we are the news, and they are coming to us to be informed and to celebrate their neighbors, their communities.
According to the Washington Post, back in 2015 67% of Americans were really interested in the news. Now, it’s 49%.
That doesn’t seem hopeful, right?
At the same time, according to a Gallup poll, only 22% of Americans are happy with where the country is going. Those numbers are from 2023, actually.
We are less interested in the news, these numbers say, and we are less hopeful. Is there a causation? A correlation? I have no idea. But the news industry is suffering in a lot of places.
What I can tell you is that the reason people read our news (even though I am the queen of the typo and have so many issues) is that they believe in us.
They are reading our news because they want to hope. They want to celebrate the good in the community (we do a lot of features) as well as know about the issues.
They are reading the news because they care.
They care.
That gives me so much hope.
All our news is free. It will always be free for as long as we do it because we want people in our community to be able to have the facts and stories regardless of their ability to pay, but we aren’t a nonprofit. We’re just spouses (a staff of two that wrote a million words last year) who really love our community, love hope, love the news and love knowledge. Still, over 300 people have chosen to voluntarily pay and support us.
How cool is that?
You know what it gives me? It gives me hope.
That hope doesn’t just stem from the fact that people are voluntarily reading our news (we have open rates of over 60%, which is good, I guess), but also because by reporting the news, we get to see the good in people.
We get to talk to a Mi'kmaq vice chief volunteering his time to advance and illuminate the Wabanaki Nations’ heritage.
We get to celebrate how people create and post signs about turtle crossings, trying to keep those turtles safe from cars.
We get to showcase how neighbors help neighbors by giving them rides to dialysis or doctors’ appointments. Or just how one resident on a street has a corner garden she’s defending against cars. Or how one small wildlife rescue in our town saves and cares for so many wounded animals.
Those people? The acts that they do? The time that they give? I wouldn’t know about them without the news. But I do now and each and every one of them give me hope.
And my hope today? My hope today is that you can find hope in places, too. That you aren’t so overwhelmed and discouraged by gossip, by bias, by scoundrels that you can see the vice chief, the turtle savers, the neighbors, the gardeners, the wildlife rescuers, and that they can give you hope, too.
COOL CITATIONS AND LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Anthony P. Carnevale and Emma Wenzinger. Stop the Presses: Journalism Employment and the Economic Value of 850 Journalism and Communication Programs. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, 2022. cew.georgetown.edu/journalism.
How you can support us, but no pressure!
Here’s our other site:
