By Michael Davis

Columnist

Howdy neighbor.

Today, we’re talking about The News, and sadly I can’t sugarcoat things; it’s as our editor tells it in our past few numbers. Things are not all well down in the old office at Tannery Falls, not for a long time now, and if we’re not at the breaking point presently, we’re surely teetering on it now. I write this column as one with a deep love and great emotional stake in the continued publication of The Bridgton News, but in the interest of transparency I would also stress I am in no way financially connected to the paper past my yearly subscription, nor am I privy to any internal business decisions beyond the publicly available information at this time.  I write this solely as a contributor who hopes our readers will copy and share this particular column as widely as they can, to reach all those with ears to hear today’s plea. Circulate it, print it, send it to other papers, make it viral if you know how. I sure don’t. But get it out there if you can. Please do this for me as your friend, I pray.

Both as a Bridgtonite and a historian, I cannot stress highly enough how damaging a blow it would be to our community if we were to lose The Bridgton News. How many thousands of local events and incidents, family notices, births, deaths, vital meetings on which the future of town turns, champion buzzer-beating sports plays; all the rich tapestry of minutiae which make up small-town life, would be lost to our immediate notice and forever lost to the knowledge of later generations, if The News were not here to document them. If you are as shaken by this thought as I am, then take heed in this; for there is something we can do.

Today, I’m sharing a piece from The Bridgton News of March 18, 1938, which for me captures far better than any plain prose could, the pure essence of just what it is that makes a paper like ours so special. In these lines, the value of this dear institution is held. It comes in the form of a simple poem by Clara McCreery appearing under the title, “A Little Country Paper.”

“I get a little paper from a little country town —

A far cry from the dailies, that on Sundays weigh us down;

It’s printed every Friday, and it has no supplement,

Nor colored rotogravure, but I’m always glad it’s sent.

It gives no clever verses by the syndicated bards,

But states that Mrs. Williams entertained some friends at cards;

‘Ye Scribe’ saw Judge McArthur shaking hands with friends today —

It says the Curtis family sold out and moved away.

On Boulder Dam it’s silent, and there’s nothing on finance –

It tells that the Rebekahs gave an installation dance.

That Mrs. Day is soon again to open up her school,

That Alexander Hargrave lost a valuable mule.

It’s glad that Jimmy Gallagher can be around again.

It claims that the alfalfa crop is much in need of rain;

The supervisors voted for the road work to commence;

Will Anderson hauled lumber for his new garage and fence.

The worldly ones may smile at it, but theirs are tender smiles –

These home town items form a bond through many years and miles.

Oh, little country paper, with your little weekly talks!

I like to wander with you down remembered roads and walks.”

When I first spoke with our editor Wayne Rivet over four years ago, asking if I might submit a few special columns in celebration of The News’ 150th year, I remember saying to him in answer to his admitted surprise, that of course I’d be happy to write a column for the paper; it’s an institution. Who wouldn’t want to help it? I still feel that way today.  It is an institution. But sadly, it is appearing in our present, disenchanted age, that this does not quite count for all it used to, at least not without concerted help. In my life, and the decades before it, while Bridgton’s grown more and more each year, it’s lost things too. Dear things whose preservation our forefathers never would have doubted. We’ve lost libraries, societies, churches, post offices, and now even the fate of The News is in question. Have we managed this town well?

Here in America, an average of two-and-a-half newspapers closed every week in 2023, up from a rate of two a week the previous year. This decline is so swift that as of today our country has lost one third of all the papers it had in 2005. And this national decline, though The News has weathered it, did not leave it unscathed, and the pandemic didn’t help at all. When I graduated high school not so very long ago, The Bridgton News had 36 pages in an average issue. Many readers will remember earlier times when it swelled to four full sections, often with extra special inserts. Back in 1976, if you can believe it, The News actually carried 56 pages per issue. It’s a 16-page paper now, if we’re lucky. I’ll leave someone better at percentages than I to reckon the statistic of this loss, but the danger’s easy enough to understand even without fully quantifying it. A community newspaper needs support, and publishing costs rise every year. Even speaking generally, it follows that if subscriptions and advertising sales do not at least follow that upward trend, bad things will sooner or later ensue. We’re at later right now.

The father of modern journalism, Walter Lippmann, once wrote, “The newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read.” In an era when trust in democracy and public input in our style of representative self-governance is at its lowest-ebb in generations, if not ever, we would do well not to lose one of the best, independently owned tools we have at remaining engaged with our community. As it happens, The Bridgton News is one of seven papers we’ve had here in town over the past two and a half centuries. These seven are, in order of publication; the Bridgton Reporter, the Bridgton Sentinel, the Bridgton News, the Bridgton Druggist, the Bridgton Knickerbocker, the Bridgton Record, and the Bridgton Star. Each of these papers, with one exception, did not last even a decade, and many of them failed within just two years. Only one did not, only one is still in publication today, and that is of course our very own Bridgton News, now in its 154th year. And there’s a reason it survived when all others didn’t; and that reason is because our community looked at it, saw that it was good, that it valued us and our lives, and we cherished it in return, and held it up as one of our own. We welcomed it into our homes, knew it for a friend and loved it dearly; holding fast to it when so many towns twice our size neglected to support their own. They say a paper reflects its town and this is true. It champions the best of us, handles our worst with chaste discretion, and shares in all our joys and sorrows, our triumphs and our failures; never judging us, but helping us to know ourselves the better. It reflects who we are and helps us realize what we want our community to be. 

I know for all our readers right now I’m preaching to the choir. You already take the paper, subscribe, pick up copies in the village, or receive it by post in far-flung states where otherwise our little town of Bridgton is an unheard of backwater. But though The Bridgton News casts a long shadow, far enough to reach our sons and daughters though they be in distant lands, and with it breathe a word of comfort and of home. It strengthens us in our ties to our town and keeps us up to date with the local dilemma de jour. We should all appreciate how lucky we are to have this luxury. I fear there are many in town today who do not, and I cannot understand their disaffection. Bridgton has never had more residents at any point in history than it does now — why then should the paper be in so sorry a state of support?

So, I’m hereby calling on all who can to step up and do their part. To spread the word. To promote. To proselytize even. I’m not above going door to door, I’ve done it for other causes. And possibly I’m going to upset some among our community when I say this, but it is indeed a time for our paper to sink or swim and I feel it’s high time for a come to Jesus meeting. The number of people who live in Bridgton right now who do not take the paper is too high, plain and simple. And while I understand that in our fast-paced modern age, digital everything, shadowy media conglomerates and instant social media bubbles may seem a tempting answer to all one’s pressing information needs, but such is an unconvincing and ultimately hollow substitute, and leads one away from truth and moderacy with an ease far greater than it does toward them, and with nary a concern for the conditions and welfare of those communities into which it reaches.  But the small-town paper is ours, it will always be ours, and just so it depends on our good stewardship to survive.

The News costs just 95 cents an issue. It’s $28.95 to get a digital subscription e-mailed to you every week and only $52 to subscribe to the print edition for a full year. For Bridgton residents, and our citizens abroad, this should not be out of reach to any household, for the value it provides. For local merchants right now weighing the purchase of any ad space, on whose revenues the paper historically depends; by The News’ 2022 price sheet it costs just $6.25 per column inch to take out an ad here. For the same space in the Portland Press Herald, such an ad costs $78 per column inch. Take advantage of this before you can’t.

Bridgton’s population is growing at a record pace, and many are moving into new housing and apartments. I’d be curious to know how many of our new neighbors take the paper. If you don’t, then let this stand as invitation. I want so genuinely to get to know you, and for you to know how we do things in this neck of the woods, and the paper is the way to do it. Online media is not enough. How often I see a message on the community page asking, where do I get this, or does anyone know that, etc.… and the answer is in the paper that week. Please join with us and support the things which make town special; the better you know Bridgton, the more you’ll love living here, I promise. And for anyone with an interest in bringing new residents to town, whether developer, insurance company, realtor, or landlord, how about you buy them a one-year subscription to the paper as part of their contract or lease? If they read it, they will like it, and more likely than not they’ll keep subscribing when it lapses. The same goes to any groups trying to promote strong community and local culture — spreading the paper is the number one way for locals to get involved. It was comforting to see the many town officials weigh in with letters of support last week, but how about something in the way of a resolve or abatement to help the paper out? I can’t think of an outside agency doing more good in our town than The News, and I say that as one who wears several hats and enjoys much involvement in many worthy local causes.

And longtime readers; if you’ve let your subscription lapse on the principle that you can always buy it at a local store, or borrow it from a neighbor to read only the columns you like, I’d ask you to let the paper feel your support directly by subscribing through The News office. Talk to your neighbors about it, sell them on the idea. Buy subscriptions for your family in distant places. Gift it to friends for the holidays. Go full on Back to the Future, Goldie Wilks, Save the Clocktower. It’s now or never. Because a town deserves the paper it has, and I hope very much that Bridgton will continue to deserve ours, and to care enough to support it. For I can’t think of a community colder, more divided and less welcoming, than one which turns its back on its longest serving secular institution in its hour of direst need, simply out of disinterest. As someone who believes in the welcoming spirit of Bridgton, that prospect terrifies me. Please say it isn’t so.

If one day, staring down the uncertainty of possible futures, yet another small-town rural paper here in Maine is eventually forced to close up shop, it will not be right — it will not be acceptable — to claim what many may try to say, that it’s “because the newspaper failed.” No, if ever The Bridgton News should stagger, fall and breathe its last shuddering groan as the presses seize forever with a jarring clatter of type and one last, gory arterial spray of printer’s ink upon the wall, it will be because we have failed it. Please join with me. Don’t let it happen. Not here.

Till next time?