As we prepare our crowdfunding campaign in an effort to restore the home delivery of our paper, we admonish our readers to step up to help us do more to serve the City of Falls Church that we love and have served for, lo, these 34 years, and counting. We ask you to contact F.C. City Council members and urge them to support their colleague Laura Downs’ proposal for a weekly City ad in our paper to better inform the F.C. citizenry.
A brave Falls Church City Council member, Laura Downs, told her colleagues at a work session this Monday that a small portion of the $2.6 million surplus in the City’s last fiscal year budget should go to securing a weekly ad in this paper, the News-Press, that the City would use to inform the public of important matters, including events.
Downs’ suggestion came, she said, from her going door-to-door in the City for her re-election campaign and learning that there are many citizens, especially older ones, who do not use the Internet and thereby do not get information from the City, which is currently limited to a once-weekly online communique. Downs said that an ad in the News-Press would address that situation. Her idea led to no comments except by City Manager Wyatt Shields, who said his staff’s proposed list of expenditures was sufficient.
This is a matter of importance not so much for the News-Press as it is for all the citizens of the community. It should be the City government’s responsibility to make sure all of its citizens are as fully informed as possible about its goings on. It is a matter of transparency and community engagement, both.
We ask you, Dear Reader, to weigh in on behalf of Down’s proposal.
Last week, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger said this about newspapers in general: “Newspapers, once powerful institutions in their communities, are but a shell of their former selves. At least six once-daily newspapers in Virginia are no longer dailies. Many no longer have local opinion pages. The result: Candidates no longer pay much attention to them.”
Well, that may be true for most of Virginia, but not for the City of Falls Church. This community has been blessed by the ongoing existence of a bonafide local newspaper. We have been at this for three dozen years, with no intention of going anywhere. We feel strongly that the City government needs to recognize the importance of this increasingly rare asset and to use it to the benefit of its constituents along the lines Council member Downs has now proposed.
A final vote on the matter of allocating surplus money from the last fiscal year is coming up next month. Now is the time that the voices of our readers need to be heard. Please pitch in to support Downs’ proposal on behalf of all citizens and your local newspaper, as well.