Editorial: Respect for small, community newspapers

By Morgan M. Hurley | Editor

I grew up as the daughter of the editor of my hometown newspaper, The Lamplighter, and it was delivered twice-per-week to people’s driveways and businesses, and just about everyone in town subscribed to it. Those subscribers are what paid for the salaries, printing and distribution of the paper, along with ad sales, but it was never dependent upon ad sales. It was the paper of record for a small town in southeast Los Angeles, directly on the border of Orange County, called La Mirada. 

I was extremely interested in “the paper” business and obviously influenced by my dad’s job, started writing for my school papers, starting with fifth grade, and did so all the way through high school and even college.

Regardless of the many advisors and teachers I had during those years, it was my dad who taught me about the news. He instilled in me the importance of stories that started “above the fold”; how personal views should never be introduced into any article, other than those found on the opinion page; and he always emphasized the integrity of journalism in general. Research and interviews vs. shoddy guesswork. Facts vs. untruths. Holding local politicians to account, and giving them their due when they deserved it, regardless of party. He’d be horrified by the likes of the Fox News-style journalism of today.

Despite his small sphere of readership compared to say, the Los Angeles Times or the Orange County Register of the time, his newspaper was incredibly important and well-read in our town. It covered Little League baseball and high school football games, locals who made the Olympics, local men who were killed in Vietnam, new business grand openings, parties at the local park, car accidents on one of our major streets, parades, kids who did amazing things, businesses who went above and beyond, the art festivals, City Hall, and of course, local politics.

At a very early age, I recognized that my dad wielded a surprising amount of influence back then, seemingly because of the power of what came out of his typewriter twice a week.

Everyone wanted to be his friend, buy him a drink, give him tickets to theme parks and other events. He got awards for his writing and media support all the time and was even dubbed “Man of the Year” by the Chamber of Commerce.

He also had a lot of enemies. Like I said, he had a great deal of power, specifically when it came to local politics. He always held onto his endorsement editorials until the last paper published prior to any local election. He never focused on party; rather the candidate’s ability to do the job for La Mirada. His endorsements always won, and that often made people on the other side of the ticket and their supporters very unhappy with him and he lost many friends. He also wrote investigative stories that uncovered scandals previously unequaled in such a small town, even of people he may have shared a drink with just the month before. I remember police escorts to school on more than one occasion and seeing flyers on every car at a local mall that demonized my dad and included his photo – the equivalent of social media take downs today.

I share all this for good reason. Journalism and integrity still matters.

We are a small LGBTQ community and this is the newspaper of record for that community. We have a very small staff and we work hard to cover the news and events that we can that happen locally.

There is a lot to cover and while it’s hard enough with a biweekly paper to catch everything, it’s even harder with a monthly paper, but we do our best.

As a monthly, community newspaper, we are only dependent upon ad sales and now reader donations through our website. We too, have to pay our writers, our printer, and our distributor who delivers across the county for each issue.

We hope we are putting out a product that people enjoy reading and can learn something from, but we know not everyone is going to appreciate us. We can only hope that when they don’t, they bring it directly to us, rather than hit us from behind.

Recently, we’ve been seeing attacks on our distribution points. Papers disappearing from places and in other locations, directly thrown in the trash (see photo) next to where the stack had previously been. We’ve also had our papers intentionally moved away or under other stacks of papers so as not to be seen.

We know we are not the only LGBTQ publication in town, but there is room for all of us, and for many different reasons. We don’t know who is doing this, we only know it’s been happening the last few months.

When I first moved to San Diego in 1987, we had Gay & Lesbian News, Update, Bravo!, and the LA-based Lesbian Connection. Each week, I picked up every one of them during my Friday night out. Over that weekend, I read each one cover-to-cover, even though sometimes there were similar stories because three of the papers were all covering the same local LGBT community. The beauty was that they each were unique and each contributed to teaching me about the community I was a growing part of.

There is no reason for us not to have a similar situation today. We greatly appreciate The Word and Rage Magazine and we feel that each periodical has a different purpose, despite having similar audiences and coverages.

But someone is trying to  hamper our ability to get the news out to our readers.

We would like to ask you to be our eyes and ears on the street and if you ever see stacks of our papers being thrown out or moved or shoved under other papers, please say something, or shoot us an anonymous message about the location so we can get there and rearrange or restock as soon as possible. Or advertisers and vendors depend on it. Thank you so much. 

As always, please feel free to reach out with news tips, ideas, support or even criticism to editor@lgbtqsd.news. We appreciate your readership.

Sincerely,

Morgan

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I hope you enjoyed reading this article and hope you will also consider supporting our independent news organization. LGBTQ San Diego County News is one of California’s last LGBTQ print newspapers. But we are in danger of going out of print. During times of crisis, celebration, and mourning, crucial information about our community comes from local reporters and writers. LGBTQ San Diego County News needs your help and support in order to continue printing.

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-Eddie Reynoso, Publisher