Today, The Millerton News continues the tradition of The Editorial. In our recent history, before becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2021, we engaged in political endorsement — no longer, because of our new status. We were saved from the struggle to survive in a declining newspaper climate by our readers, who wanted their independent community newspaper.
The industry as a whole has been sending The Editorial down the gangplank for a number of reasons. Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper publisher by circulation, learned from its own editors a couple of years ago that readers don’t want to be told what to think. Gannett also heard that The Editorial is one of the least-read features, and worse, that readers have cited it as a reason to cancel their subscriptions.
In the 2016 presidential race, 57 of the biggest newspapers in the land endorsed Hilary Clinton while two picked Donald Trump, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Gone are the days when an endorsement from a prominent newspaper would mean something, or when voters would clip The Editorial out of the paper and carry it along with them on the way to the poll. According to the American Presidency Project, in 2008, more than nine out of 10 of the country’s 100 biggest newspapers endorsed a presidential candidate. By 2020, only 54 issued an endorsement.
The Arizona Republic, a Gannett paper, decided to refocus its Editorial offering by publishing an opinion section in its print edition only three days a week. The disappearance of opinion content across many newspapers also has meant that the editorial cartoonist, a mainstay of newspapers for decades, has been marginalized. Last summer, in a single day, three Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists were laid off, victims of the readers’ rejection of opinion.
As an independent community newspaper supported by readers, advertisers and our generous community, we are not guided by the kind of metrics that drive decisions at national media organizations. However, like many news organizations these days, we have fewer people doing the work compared to years past. Since 2005, the journalist corps at American newspapers has experienced massive — 60% — job losses.
Our goal is to remain relevant and interesting to our readers — and we work hard at it with our own modest stable of reporters and editors. Your letters and our viewpoint columns provide a rich lode of thoughtful content for our readers week in and week out, expressing opinions and putting a spotlight on the big issues of the day. Our Editorials will aim to be relevant and interesting, and to keep them that way, we will deliver them to you on a more periodic basis.
So, if you scan our Opinion page one day and don’t see The Editorial, it means only that we are busily occupied in other ways, reporting and editing the news, a tradition that is almost a century in the making and not going anywhere.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino 
