Wise County Messenger

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Mourning, moving forward with mission


We were sad to hear this week that The Bridgeport Index is closing at the end of the month.

Although we were friendly competitors, we were also cohorts in the newspaper business with shared goals of keeping the community informed and at times, shared frustrations.

Kristen Tribe

We often worked shoulder-to-shoulder at city council, school board and county commissioners meetings, not to mention community events and the occasional car accident.

In this age of information overload, it’s disheartening to lose a source of truly local news. Like us, the Index has worked hard through the years to not only cover news, but also share the personal stories of their readers, preserving the history of their community every week in print.

Sadly, the Index is one of several community newspapers in the state of Texas that have recently closed. I think often, readers take their community newspaper for granted. It’s viewed as a service, instead of a business. We do provide a service, but we’re not non-profit.

We’re like every other business in town and require local financial support to keep the doors open. In the newspaper business, that means we need people to buy advertising and subscriptions. When you hear local civic leaders encouraging you to shop local, that includes the newspaper, too.

A study out of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business – “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance” – said the loss of local newspapers leads to poorly run government and higher costs.

The study’s author, finance professor Paul Gao, said, “When local newspapers aren’t there to hold governments accountable, we see costs increase due to a lack of scrutiny over local deals.

“With the loss of local news coverage also comes higher long-term borrowing costs for cities … Costs for bonds increase from 5 to 11 basis points, and these results are not due to underlying economic conditions.”

This conclusion was reached after studying 1,600 English-language newspapers serving 1,266 counties in the United States between 1996 and 2015.

Messenger reporters sit as watch dogs in the meetings of various local entities, not because we’re entertained by parliamentary procedure, but to take care of you and make sure your tax dollars are spent appropriately. We’re your eyes and ears, making sure elected officials do their jobs and operate according to the law.

If no one is watching, it’s tempting for a government entity to take action and ask forgiveness later for things like raising the tax rate, seeking an outlandish bond or slapping the hand of an employee who has acted inappropriately or mishandled government business.

We are also here to celebrate with you through sports coverage, birth announcements, coverage of local festivals and features telling the stories of our friends and neighbors.

In short, nobody loves you like we do. We’re here all day, every day, standing with you and documenting both the tragedy and triumph in our corner of the world.

A Metroplex TV station may swoop in from time to time to do a local story. But do you know why they show up here? Have you ever wondered how they know what’s happening in Wise County? They read the Wise County Messenger, our daily Update and follow our breaking news stories.

We know this because their reporters call our newsroom asking to use photos and email our reporters asking for sources. We make their jobs easy, and if we did not exist, the Dallas/Fort Worth television stations would never do a story in Wise County.

Local newspapers curate a community’s history in a way that cannot be replicated or preserved on TV, radio or social media.

The Messenger is the community hub where business, news, public opinion and general lifestyle converge through advertising, newsroom-produced coverage and submitted content. It’s a long table where everyone is welcome to join the conversation.

The Index will be missed, and there is no doubt its absence will leave a hole in the community. We’ve lost a counterpart in the news business, and while we mourn, we will not be deterred from our mission. With your continued support, we will be here to keep watch and tell your stories, all in a fast-growing, ever-changing county. It’s a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we hope you recognize it as well.

Kristen Tribe is publisher of the Messenger.

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