A Paper of Their Own, Again

by Bruce Schimmel

The neighborhood of Mount Airy has astonishing bulletin boards. Which is a good sign for a community that's had its weekly paper taken away from it.

Take it from me, who's watched Philadelphia newspapers live, die and occasionally revive for a long time. As an indicator of a paper's viability, community bulletin boards — better, even, than demographics — tell all.

The bulletin board, for instance, at InFusion coffee house on Germantown Avenue is huge, maybe 7 feet long. When the door opens, it flutters with hundreds of colorful handbills proclaiming the virtues of dog-walkers, designers, builders and yogis.

And the bulletin board at nearby Weaver's Way Co-Op is even bigger. It encompasses an entire stairwell, with layer upon layer of paper — ads from plumbers, retailers, medical people and entrepreneurs of all sorts.

But to a publisher, bulletin boards are more than fun. Mount Airy's burgeoning boards foretell good news for this progressive enclave in Northwest Philly, now without their weekly. Community groups, like West Mount Airy Neighbors (WMAN) and Weaver's Way, are wondering what the next step is.

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In a recent Valentine's Day massacre, Journal Register Co. abruptly killed off both the Mount Airy Times Express and the neighboring Germantown Courier. And in the case of the Express, it was most certainly a senseless manslaughter.

As a publisher, it's hard for me to understand why JRC pulled the plug on a paper for an attractive community with a very attractive demographic. Any fool with a spreadsheet could make an excellent case for a weekly paper whose initial run of 10,000 came to serve some 75,000 people — all of whom are now without one.

But apparently the folks at JRC — a newspaper conglomerate with headquarters in Yardley — had more pressing issues. Shortly after they shuttered the Times Express and the Courier, the corporation declared bankruptcy — ironically on the same weekend that the Inquirer/Daily News applied for protection from its creditors.

Dailies, it's true, are pretty much done for. Having been in the business of selling their news, they're killing themselves by migrating to the Web and giving it away.

But weeklies are built on a free-paper model, and have an excellent chance of surviving the economic upheaval. As dailies continue to shed readers, according to a Pew study, the audience for weeklies continues to grow. Good weeklies will survive, because in the end they're worth the carbon units.

And Mount Airy certainly understands the value of a paper of its own. Which is why the community itself first created the paper in 1981 — before it eventually fell into the hands of the JRC.

Sensing the paper's demise, Laura Morris Siena of WMAN says that some tried recently to buy back the Times-Express from the JRC. But the company wouldn't sell.

So much the better. Because now with the Times-Express' death, the name is up for grabs. All it would take is a tweak: The New Mount Airy Express, anyone?

Weaver's Way is one of the entities thinking of ways to fill the gap. There's talk of expanding its own monthly publication to encompass the community beyond its 3,500 family members. That's a stretch for a food co-op — but certainly within the scope of its mission to create a local, sustainable economy. (It's no small coincidence that City Paper's founding editor, Chris Hill, serves as the co-op's treasurer.)

Losing their paper, and the tumult it's caused, says Siena, has actually done some good. "It's been a community-building experience," she says.

It's a community-building experience that will continue as a new Mount Airy Express rises. They will have a paper of their own, again — because the writing is already on their bulletin board walls.

(bruce@schimmel.com)