Tuesday January 24, 2023; 12:08 PM EST
- Maybe a decade ago, I walked through the newsroom of our local paper, which has been in business since the time of the Civil War. Half the desks were already empty. Since then, the paper's been sold a couple of times, I believe, and stripped down even further, and in the morning the front page doesn't always even have a local writer covering a local news story. Some pages might as well be from a copy of USA Today, given the bylines they carry. Looks like there are fewer than ten writers there now, and several are covering Notre Dame sports. They say the writers didn't get paid for a few weeks earlier this winter. As a community of a quarter million people, we're in trouble.#
- So there's got to be a hunger for local writing. Got to be. Unless more spirit has been drained out of the community than I had guessed. The way forward, however, is not clear to see.#