Long-time City of Falls Church community activist Keith Thurston delivered an unexpected, passionate appeal to the Falls Church City Council this Monday to support the City’s long-standing community newspaper, the Falls Church News-Press. The newspaper announced earlier this month that due to financial pressures, it was forced to suspend its practice of carrier-delivering the paper to every household in Falls Church for the first time since its founding in 1991.
Thurston, the influential head of the Falls Church CATCH Foundation (a catch-all combination of “City Arts, Theater, Culture and History” programs and efforts in the Little City), urged the Council to make an “investment to keep this (the News-Press) viable.”
He said, “We in Falls Church are very lucky to have a hometown newspaper. Many places in America have lost theirs and are feeling the loss.” He added that the News-Press “is part of the fabric of the community that needs to be preserved. Losing it will be losing some of who we are as a community. It is how we know what is important, what will happen and what has happened.”
In fact, the News-Press has thus far outlived a dramatic loss of community newspapers throughout the U.S., and also in Northern Virginia, due to unprecedented declines in advertising revenue. According to the Pew Research Center, total advertising revenue in newspapers has dropped by $39 billion since 2000, from $48 billion to $9 billion, such that more than half of U.S. counties have limited access to reliable local news and over 200 counties have no local news at all.
This Monday night, Thurston, reading from prepared notes during the public petitioning period of the Council’s business meeting, then noted that the newspaper represents a “push” form of communication “where the reader gets informed just by picking it up from their yard.”
He contrasted that to “websites and email links that are ‘pull’ forms of communication where one has to seek out the website or click on the link in the email inbox that is already overflowing.”
Home delivery of the News-Press, as all citizens of Falls Church have enjoyed for over 34 years to date, have been an effective “push” mode of communication that helps to ensure the contents get to prospective readers. Since its first issue rolled off the presses in March 1991 and for every week since, a total of over 1750 weekly editions have appeared during a veritable renaissance in the City that has seen economic development, educational and civic infrastructure and population expand at a rapid pace, even while tax rates have declined.
“Push versus pull” modes of communication are widely discussed in information circles, and their distinctions are very significant. The concepts of “push” and “pull” refer to two distinct methods of disseminating information, each with its unique characteristics and applications.
“Push” dissemination is when information is proactively sent. This method is typically used by newspapers, as well as organizations, marketers, or content creators who want to ensure their message reaches a wide audience. “Push” information is often characterized by its one-way communication. The advantage of this approach is that it can reach large numbers of people, and the information is delivered without them having to actively look for it.
In contrast, “pull” dissemination refers to when individuals are left to actively seek out information. In this case, the recipient pulls the information they want to engage with, usually through search engines, websites, or social media. For instance, a person might search for specific information online or follow a website to access content. This method limits the reach of content since it relies on the audience’s initiative.
In the case of the News-Press, and good community newspapers in general, the most essential component of their functioning is the sense of community that they engender by virtue of the wide range of the subject matter concerning a local community that is contained in them. The reader is exposed to this range by virtue of just picking up and opening the newspaper, and thus is engaged in the workings of the community as a whole, and not just a narrow corridor of interest that he is limited to by resorting to “pull” forms of information dissemination.
This Monday night, Thurston urged the City Council to “consider the investment to keep this (the News-Press) viable.”
He added, “City legal notices are required, and the newspaper of record allows this to happen. If those notices are made via the Washington Post, we will see how really expensive that would be, and how less effective since few get the paper version of the Post anymore.”
Thurston concluded, “We are losing Brown’s Hardware, but the Falls Church News-Press home delivery is something that we in the City can save. I beseech the City leaders to consider the options.”
