Editorial: The incredible media market of Sonoma Valley

It’s National Newspaper Week, the time of year when we remind readers of the value of local journalism. Through pandemic, fire and flood, the Index-Tribune never missed a beat, arriving every Tuesday and Friday like clockwork on doorsteps across the Valley. We’re a constant that readers rely on, as the only media outlet that regularly reports on everything from the actions of the City Council to the high school sports scores.

When it comes to local news, Sonoma has an embarrassment of riches. There’s the reporting from our “big sister” paper, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Press Democrat, plus the slick Sonoma magazine, which covers most things fun and flavorful. Then there’s the small-but-mighty Sonoma Sun and Kenwood Press, not to mention our nonprofit KSVY radio station and SonomaTV public access television. What’s more, all of our media outlets are independent; owned and operated by people who live and work in our neighborhoods.

The media market in Sonoma Valley bucks every single state and national trend. In the past 15 years, more than one-fifth of the newspapers in America have closed up shop for good, the New York Times reported. The number of professional journalists working in America were cut in half in that time, leaving news deserts across the country.

Many of the remaining small-town papers and media sites are under the vampirical control of hedge fund-backed companies that bleed every dollar out of the operation and town, reducing staff to anemic levels and cutting the heart out of most of its newsrooms.

In a heartbreaking piece in the Atlantic this week, “What we lost when Gannett came to town,” Elaine Godfrey writes of watching her hometown newspaper in Burlington, Iowa, disintegrate from a robust daily paper to a shell of its former self. She aptly notes that her town lost not just a political watchdog and breaking news outlet, it no longer has coverage of the annual Teddy Bear Tea Party or what new business is opening down the street.

“These stories are the connective tissue of a community; they introduce people to their neighbors, and they encourage readers to listen to and empathize with one another. When that tissue disintegrates, something vital rots away. We don’t often stop to ponder the way that a newspaper’s collapse makes people feel: less connected, more alone. As local news crumbles, so does our tether to one another,” Godfrey writes.

Some readers might call our coverage of local arts and kids events “fluff,” but one can’t deny that it allows readers to meet their neighbors in an unusual way, learning little fun facts that make for great conversation when you bump into that person in the check-out line at Sonoma Market.

Unlike social media, which quickly devolves into a cesspool of misinformation and personal attacks, there are people who produce every piece of your newspaper. It is made with love and a dedication that can’t be understated.

Things in the newspaper industry got even worse in the pandemic, as advertising revenue took a major hit in most companies. The San Francisco Chronicle, for instance, offered buy-outs to many of its most seasoned staff in 2020, dispatching years of institutional knowledge, to be replaced by ambitious but less-experienced cub reporters.

Here at Sonoma Media Investments, the parent company to the Index-Tribune, we decided that keeping our newsrooms strong was more important than keeping executive salaries intact. That’s the difference you get with a locally owned newspaper company.

Are we perfect? Of course not. But we care deeply about accountability, the truth, being a community sounding board and of course, all things Sonoma.

The support we’ve seen from readers ensures the extreme unlikelihood we will ever have a situation like the one described in Burlington, where The Hawk Eye no longer has the resources to be a full resource to its community.

“Last fall, a man named Gary posted on the ‘Burlington Breaking News’ page, asking: ‘Anyone know what is going to be built at Broadway and Division south of the Girl Scout office?’ A construction crew had recently broken ground at the site,” Godfrey wrote.

“People in the Facebook group started to weigh in: Maybe it’ll be a new sandwich joint; that’d be nice. Maybe a coffee shop, or a Dollar Tree, or another bank. Someone had heard that it might be a dentist’s office. One of the page’s moderators suggested that perhaps it was a new spec building that would soon be put up for sale. Then the thread ended. The Hawk Eye never ran a story about the new building. Soon, the post was forgotten, buried under a mounting pile of questions from other southeastern Iowans wondering what, exactly, was going on in town.”

We are grateful to our loyal readers and advertisers — on National Newspaper Week and every day. Thanks for your support, Sonoma Valley.