Another local newspaper closes

We were sorry to learn this week that The Examiner, the weekly newspaper covering Mount Kisco, Armonk, North Castle, Pleasantville, Yorktown, Chappaqua and other towns bordering The Recorder’s coverage areas of Bedford, Lewisboro and Pound Ridge unfortunately has closed its print edition and has lost most of its staff as it transitions to an as-yet unspecified all-digital version in the near future.

When The Recorder was in its planning stages, Examiner publisher Adam Stone offered helpful advice, and the pages of The Examiner set a standard for community journalism that The Recorder has aspired to emulate. Coincidentally, the origins of The Examiner go back to 2007, when Stone left a staff reporting job at North County News to freelance. He secured an assignment from The Recorder’s predecessor newspaper, The Record-Review, to cover a local Zoning Board of Appeals meeting. Stone said that experience played a pivotal role in propelling his decision to start The Examiner.

The void created by these changes at The Examiner will be felt across northern Westchester, impacting readers, advertisers, community organizations, businesses and municipal governments at a time when professionally reported, fact-checked local news is more important than ever. Accordingly, The Recorder is now exploring ways we may be able to help close this gap and ensure that our broader community remains informed and connected.

The announced closing of The Examiner’s print edition continues the deeply concerning spread of news deserts. 

As we’ve observed previously, the acceleration of internet and mobile technology, changing habits of news consumption and declines in advertising revenue have decimated the national and local newspaper industry. In recent years, over 2,600 newspapers across the U.S. have closed, with the gap too often filled by social media disinformation, unstaffed “ghost” and hyper-partisan “pink slime” newspapers. Numerous studies confirm the resulting civic losses including less government oversight, less effective schools and a general decline in community involvement.

It was for these reasons that The Recorder was established last year as a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet. As the news desert phenomenon continues to impact Westchester, The Recorder’s mission to provide a trustworthy source of independent, nonpartisan local news and information is more important than ever. We will continue to seek the vital support of our readers, subscribers, donors and advertisers to help us build a local news organization that will endure and continue to serve our communities.