By David Hoffman

Five dollars. That’s what was sitting in the Falls Church News-Press bank account during one of its leanest early stretches, when Nicholas F. Benton had to ask his staff to keep working with no promise of a paycheck. They said yes, and he paid back every dime. Thirty-five years and more than 1,800 consecutive weekly editions later, the paper is still hitting the streets, and Benton has put the story of how it survived into a new book.

“The Mighty News-Press: How a Small, Persistent Weekly Newspaper Contributed to the Transformation of an Entire Region Over 36 Years,” a 72-page volume from BCI Books, is part memoir, part newspaper history and part battle cry for local journalism at a time when community papers are disappearing across the country. Benton will discuss it at the Mary Riley Styles Public Library on Sunday, November 1, at 2 p.m.

The newspaper’s run has been a weekly miracle thanks to a devoted (but lean) staff, freelance contributors, and managing editor Nick Gatz. It’s like the little engine that could, with Benton climbing the same hill every week, telling himself “I think I can” while wondering if he would make it over that hill one more time.

The ink got in early. At six, Benton was producing his own neighborhood paper, The Benton Star, on a hectograph his mother helped him get, writing every story and selling copies door to door. “Either I was born with printer’s ink in my veins, or I have simply never grown up — I have never been entirely sure which,” he writes.

Before Falls Church, Benton edited school papers and threw himself into the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, co-founding the Effeminist newspaper in San Francisco and writing the first editorial for Gay Sunshine. That fight shaped the philosophy he brought to the Little City: journalism isn’t just about what happened, it’s about why it matters and whose voices are about to get drowned out.

In 1991, Falls Church had no consistent coverage of its government, schools or development fights. “At first, it filled a gap, nothing more — there was no consistent local coverage of the decisions shaping the city, and someone needed to provide it,” Benton writes. The paper then clawed through recessions, the internet’s upheaval and the slow collapse of the print advertising model. As the book puts it, the first issue proves a paper can exist, but every issue after that is a promise renewed to the community.

Some of the book’s strongest passages track Northern Virginia’s transformation from bedroom suburbs into one of the most powerful regions in the country, built from decades of decisions that looked small at the time. The News-Press didn’t cause that change, Benton acknowledges, but by documenting it week after week, it helped residents see what was happening in their own backyard. He also revisits the long, bitter split at The Falls Church Episcopal over LGBTQ inclusion, where the paper paid close attention to the minority who stayed loyal to the Episcopal Church, because voices shouldn’t vanish just for being outnumbered.

The book’s core argument hits hard. A newspaper’s power isn’t measured by how many people read one story, but by whether it sticks around long enough to follow that story to the end. A national outlet can pull millions of clicks, but who’s sitting in the next City Council meeting? Who remembers what an official promised six months ago? When a local paper dies, a town loses its running public record, and nobody else is coming to keep it.

Benton shares the credit in a Hall of Fame appendix honoring longtime managing editor Jody Fellows, current managing editor Nick Gatz, former Fairfax County Supervisor and columnist Penny Gross, Arlington writer Charlie Clark, advertising director Blackwell Hawthorne and early advertiser Merelyn Kaye, whose first ad buy helped launch the paper. 

“The Mighty News-Press” is a slim volume written by a giant in his profession and a must-read for anyone who cares about local news. It’s a reminder that journalism survives on people willing to sit through one more meeting, tear apart one more budget and hit one more deadline when the money is anything but certain. It also raises a question that reaches far beyond the Little City: What happens to a community when nobody’s left to tell its story? After 35 years and 1,800-plus editions, the News-Press has its answer. Keep showing up.

Nicholas F. Benton will discuss “The Mighty News-Press: How a Small, Persistent Weekly Newspaper Contributed to the Transformation of an Entire Region Over 36 Years “ on Sunday, November 1, from 2-3 p.m. at the Mary Riley Styles Public Library in Falls Church. A book signing will follow the discussion and copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event. Registration is required. Visit: mrspl.org.