Tompkins County has a new free paper, one that looks like it intends to cover local news in depth. Tompkins Weekly has in-depth news on area events, with articles on every town and city in the county. It looks like depth is what they're aiming for, as their publisher, Etna resident Jim Graney, writes:
As long-time area residents, we have seen a significant decline in the amount of issue related news coverage in our county over the last 20 years. For many years, people have asked us to publish a paper that provides readers across the county a resource for information about issues facing our communities. Tompkins Weekly is designed to offer a look at the issues faced by our elected officials, while providing a comprehensive calendar of community events, profiles of community residents making news and other items of local interest. We encourage you to use our paper as a countywide venue for sharing news, information and ideas.
In today¹s world, participating in our democratic society requires us to be educated about the things going on in the world around us, at the international, national, and local levels. Without a comprehensive venue for examining local issues, we as Tompkins County residents lack the opportunity to come together and learn what is happening across our whole community. Tompkins Weekly hopes to help solve this situation.
This is great to see - well, actually, amazing to see. When I started Living in Dryden I didn't know if there was going to be enough news for me to write about. As it turns out, I'm covering about 1% of Dryden news, if I'm lucky, and there's so much more going on in the county as a whole that there shouldn't be any shortage of good stories. Stories written about one town's experiences often echo in others - heck, the Town of Ithaca is setting regulations for renewable energy. Sound familiar? It's solar panels, not windmills, but the article cites Dryden's recent experience too.
Shifting to a Dryden-centric perspective, there's an article on John Bailey's efforts to raise money for Disabled American Veterans by gathering sponsors for his running the New York City Marathon. County Legislator Martha Robertson is noted in a quote box about Empire Zones ("a great tool to encourage business growth") in an article about county activity.
In politics, there's an ad for David Makar for Town Board as well as a letter to the editor supporting him from Kathy Zahler.
It's also great to see Anthony Hall, who I'm guessing is the same Tony Hall who used to write for the Dryden Courier, back in action.
It's quite a newspaper, and I hope it does well. (I found my free copy at Borders Books in Pyramid Mall - I suspect there are more places to get it, and the entire thing is available on their web site as PDF or as a graphic.
Posted by simon at October 16, 2006 11:12 PM in Tompkins Weekly