Huffington Post Profiles Hyper Local News With Roosevelt Island's Main Street WIRE

Image from Huffington Post via Main Street WIRE

Roosevelt Island resident and Orphans International Founder Jim Luce writes a column for The Huffington Post. His most recent column is on Hyper-Local news focusing on Roosevelt Island's own local newspaper the Main Street WIRE. Mr. Luce writes:

...Tiny Roosevelt Island where I live -- a two-mile-long sliver in the East River -- has its fortnightly Main Street WIRE. My hometown paper is so hyper-local it ignores just about anything other newspapers are covering. Instead, it focuses on serving its 12,000 readers who live in our splinter of Manhattan, served by the world-famous Roosevelt Island Tramway.

Just how hyper-local is The WIRE? So hyper-local that when Orphans International decided to make my 50th birthday part of a fundraiser, it made page 1.

... The Main Street WIRE will start its 30th year of publication this September. The paper's history parallels that of the island itself, going back to the days when New York State leased the land from New York City.

...When residents new to the community started asking What's going on here? there was a natural solution in the days before ubiquitous e-mail and proliferating websites: We need a newspaper!

... The editor-publisher, Dick Lutz, told me, "Our paper isn't immune from the effects of national economic trouble, but it's reasonably recession-proof because its local advertisers see it as an important community service. Advertisers, whose businesses are based elsewhere, see a need to reach the Roosevelt Island audience somehow."

More on Hyper-Local news from News Innovation.