Thread by @fritzswanson

Please consider supporting my wife’s newspaper on Patreon (patreon.com/themanchesterm…). Quality local journalism is under dire threat, and building a free fact-based news source for rural America is a problem that needs to be addressed village by village, and town by town.

Over 10 years, working journalists in the US have halved from almost 80K down to less than 40K. In rural America, news deserts are becoming the norm. Sara Swanson has worked 5 years to build a free online and on paper newspaper for our community of 10k rural Michigananders.

Sara had dedicated more than a decade to charitable work in the village of Manchester, Michigan. She works for healthy food, for the fair treatment and feeding of the poor, and for the rights of women in our rural community. But she found communication was the bottleneck.

Our village had been served for over a hundred years by an established weekly, The Manchester Enterprise. But once that paper had been bought by a regional conglomerate 20 years ago, its quality declined, and its focus on local issues waned.

Finally, Sara and others in the village realized that the only way for people to know when the church was raising money for Haiti, or the kids were raising money for band uniforms; the only way for all of the charities in town to work was to start our own paper.

But then we discovered that with the return of a paper came a surge of demand from citizens for government news, for business news, for all the stuff of journalism. People wanted to know if the gas pipeline in their back yard was safe, and if zoning laws were being enforced.

And then we discovered that while a quarter of the town was engaged online, the oldest, the poorest, and the most distant members of our community needed (and LOVED) a printed paper newspaper to read at the bar, at a diner, at the library, or at home on the farm.

There are 10,000 souls in Manchester, Michigan. It takes all Sara has to get them just a bit of the news they want and need every week. This is a problem blighting huge swathes of the country. And solving it doesn’t scale. Helping us with this patch will nudge the country forward

Journalism is one of the few Constituional functions needed for good government, but not providable BY government. We’re watching three centuries of institutions whither. If you don’t feel like contributing to our work, please contribute somewhere. Buy a subscription, buy an ad.

Support the Manchester Mirror on Patreon: patreon.com/themanchesterm…

And watch our paper grow at: themanchestermirror.com

I’m shamelessly tagging some people: @polan @CharlieaWhite @annaleighclark @umichLSA @nberlat @joshtpm @RebsMarieFortes @JDScholten @arthur_affect @BridgeMichigan @MichiganPress @TScottttttt Can I get a retweet for my wife?

Please support my wife’s newspaper. patreon.com/themanchesterm…

@StaceyBakerNYT @SenWarren @mcnees @mariahc @juliewbee @SquiDaveo I want the world to know about the important work my wife is doing. Please spread the word about solving a sliver of the rural journalism crisis.