Opinion By Nick Grabbe
I’m considering whether to cancel my digital subscription to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
It pains me to write that. I worked for the local newspapers for 32 years, first as the editor of the Amherst Bulletin when it was a thriving, vibrant paper attuned to our community, and then as a writer and reporter for both the Gazette and Bulletin. Like most newspapers, they have seen a steep decline in size, coverage and influence.
And like many newspapers, the Gazette and Bulletin are no longer locally owned. More in sorrow than in anger, I write that they no longer serve the information needs of Amherst residents as they once did.
The Gazette has always been primarily a newspaper that serves readers in Northampton and Easthampton. That is shown in staffing, front-page display and the opinion page. There have been few letters or opinion columns in the Gazette about Amherst.
I do not mean to criticize Scott Merzbach, who I worked with for many years. I have immense respect for Scott, who is one of the most dedicated, clear-headed and fair reporters I’ve ever known. And I’ve always been impressed with how he can cover a meeting unobtrusively.
But Scott has to somehow keep tabs and write accurately about Amherst government, Amherst schools, Hadley government and schools, the University of Massachusetts, Pelham, Leverett, Shutesbury, sometimes even Hatfield and Holyoke. He does a heroic job, but he faces an impossible task. These beats used to be covered by four or five reporters.
The Bulletin, which no longer goes through the mail to most households in the Amherst area, has always been the Gazette organization’s flag planted in our town.
But the Bulletin is now composed almost entirely of stories and columns reprinted from the Gazette. (Click here for a post about the Bulletin in its heyday.) There are very few ads in the Bulletin, and the only major advertising insert is for Market Basket, whose closest supermarket is in Athol. How many Amherst residents are likely to shop in Athol?
I have been checking Gazettenet.com every morning for many years. The site underwent an overhaul a few months ago, which puzzled me because I was happy with the former format. I’m told that the change was made so that all the online newspapers in the chain would be alike.
There are several weird things about the new website. For some reason, a local sports contest is the first thing you see if you click on “Opinions” in the early morning. And if you click on “News,” the first thing you see is the feature about Gazette stories 10, 25 and 50 years ago (“Olds?”).
Because the Gazette is no longer printed in Northampton, its early deadline prevents next-day reporting of night meetings in the newspaper. But I’ve never understood why the website rarely has timely coverage of night meetings or Boston sports contests.
Other aspects of the new website are not improvements. In the e-edition, the print is fuzzy and you have to click on a story to read the subheads and text. I have often printed out the daily crossword puzzle, but I can no longer do that.
Daily newspapers started declining long ago, and the internet and smartphones accelerated that descent. It is clear that the future of local journalism is online.
The Amherst Current and Amherst Indy are filling many of the functions that the Gazette and Bulletin used to. We cannot expect the two newspapers to return to the days when there was a busy Amherst office with 14 full-time employees and many more part-timers. For several years, there’s been no Amherst presence at all.
If I decide to cancel my digital Gazette subscription, I will still be able to follow Scott Merzbach’s reporting of Amherst issues in the Bulletin. But I’ll miss reading the obituaries and columnists I like, such as Andrea Ayvazian, Richard McCarthy, and Amy Newshore.
I wouldn’t regret missing the stories and columns on national topics in the Gazette. Why would I read them when I subscribe to The New York Times and The Atlantic?
My wife rarely looks at the Gazette website at all, but she doesn’t want me to cancel my subscription because she thinks we should support local journalism, even if it is a far cry from what it used to be.
Maybe if I do cancel, we’ll start treating the Gazette like we treat the ACLU and Doctors Without Borders: sending them an annual check.
Nick Grabbe, co-founder of The Amherst Current, was a newspaper editor and writer based in Amherst for 32 years.
THE AMHERST CURRENT 
My belief is that local government is made way more difficult due to the absence of local media. Reliable sources that report the varied efforts of town government, organizations and individuals give people reference points, overviews and occasional in depth reports that are necessary to inform and prompt interest. Anyone who’s served on a town committee understands the benefits of sharing purpose and information.
The efforts of volunteer information sources, that frequently blend opinion into reporting, don’t seem like an effective substitute.
So even though my subscription to the Gazette costs more that the Times, I’ll pay the price and try to prompt more coverage.
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I continue to subscribe to the Gazette. We even get the print version! I like seeing the articles about national and international news, even though we also subscribe to the NYT. So, please keep your online subscription to the Gazette, Nick. It’s good to support local journalism, which is generally neutral in tone and doesn’t have a political point of view (which the Current and Indy do have.)
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We are long time subscribers to the Gazette, and with no plans to change.
The Gazette’s coverage of the Olympia Drive fires (as one small example) has been excellent.
In addition to Scott’s excellent reporting, the OpEds and letters to the editor are second to none. You can quote me on that.
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tl:dr encorage you to subscribe instead of straight up donation
During my time in Town service 1999-2021, I felt obligated to — and generally enjoyed — detailed reading of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Amherst Bulletin, and The (Springfield) Republican, along with the Reminder when I saw it. I left the NYT, WSJ, etc to other members of the family in a division of labor:-).
I was always nonplussed by the large number of residents who (sometimes proudly announce they) never read *any of the local papers* — then regularly complained no one told them the things they needed to know! These included appointed committee members and elected officials themselves:-(
Blogs and digital editions helped (remember RSS feeds?), but still most residents are not aware of local happenings, I’d guess the Community Participation requirements in the Charter have had nearly zero impact, and now those same newspapers actually have little to no local coverage, as you’ve described — not enough bodies. I really have no use for locally reprinted wire service articles I can get elsewhere, both earlier and with more context.
Although we do in fact make so many purchases locally to support our local economy (see my takeout bills) I’ve also practically never purchased something in a newspaper advertisement, even though I know that’s how all newspapers are actually produced. Note: I do love and deeply miss the local *political* advertising!
Local newspapers are the last vestige of having only three TV channels (which readers of this blog likely understand) so there’s in theory a common source of information. Local newspapers are now a poor investment for both owners and subscribers, but our household currently has the privilege to keep paying (have you seen how much the hardcopy Republican costs?!?) and the crosswords and Jumble just aren’t the same printed out:-) so we will do so for the foreseeable future.
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What’s more satisfying than opening the door and retrieving the curled ip newspaper from the front step? Certainly not firing up the laptop! Please consider your annual subscription as your continued contribution to local journalism and thank you for your years of service to it.
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The Gazette offers state and local news that is not available from any other source. (1) It is important to know what is happening in neighboring municipalities. (2)
Knowledge of news from other cities and towns provides context for what is happening in Amherst. Knowing that most communities have school funding problems enables us to know that our school funding problems are not due to circumstances and decisions unique to us. (3) The regular reports from the Statehouse News Service informs us about our state government. Without that coverage, we can’t put Amherst news in context.
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