By George Capsis
Oh, wow. The Daily News sacked half of their reporters in just ten minutes— bang, just like that.
Sure, the villain is digital media. While I’m watching the CBS six o’clock news, Dusty is watching the alternate media on her iphone.
The Times is almost bereft of ads. They do full page ads for their own little businesses like, Times Travel, and we see ads from companies we have never heard of, with cryptic messages, for products and services we don’t understand. We have entered an alien media-land.
But wait, WestView is a newspaper isn’t it? How does it manage to stay alive?
Well, it has no reporters—we don’t pay for editorial material. Instead, we have a bunch of people who have something to say and say it pretty well, like Caroline Benveniste, who co-chairs the Program Committee at the Harvard Club of New York and then does the most read section of the paper: In and Out.
Or Barry Benepe, architect and city planner, who helped develop the Farmers Market and has stainless steel opinions.
Or Arthur Schwartz, who got us the playing fields on Pier 40 and is just a beat ahead on liberal causes. He also fights, in our pages and elsewhere, to keep a hospital nearby.
I can remember when the News was two cents and the Times three. Sitting here keying, I don’t know what the Times costs now— I’ll have to get up and check. Oh, wow—$3.00!
I can also remember when the Daily News went from two cents to three cents, and I said then, nobody had an excuse any longer to buy the News (this was back in the 1930s).
I sold the Times at PS 192, collecting 15 cents from each subscriber and giving them a study pamphlet at the end of the week (it was like a test on current events).
Walking home from Rite Aid, Dusty, as she is wont to do, introduced me to a couple as the publisher of WestView and a look of reverence came over their faces. They confessed they took out a subscription because they “love the paper.” It is always hard for me to believe people like the paper that much that they send us $12.
Hmmm, got to remember to put a subscription form in this issue.
Love this article, and I have to admit I have been reading your paper for about 2 months and it is a very good newspaper especially for local residents…how could you not subscribe to this newspaper?? It is very good and I am a Texan miles and miles away!!