Feb 10

Feb 10 What We’re Missing

Why Losing The Prince George’s Sentinel Newspaper Hurts The County Even In The Info Tech Age

By Raoul Dennis

Wrote Sentinel Newspaper Publisher Lynn Kapiloff at the 165 anniversary of the Montgomery County Sentinel:

“…Nowadays, it is more important than ever to bring correct data to our readers whether they pick up a print edition or read it online.

I require my staff, whether an employee or freelancer, to check the facts presented. We also give both sides of an issue in our stories.

Collectively, we need community newspapers and not major conglomerates to provide the area with what it needs in the form of news from our community’s perspective…” -August 2019

After 47 years, The Prince George’s Sentinel published its last edition Jan 30. It simply didn’t have the advertising support it needed to stay afloat let alone grow. Dr. Bernard Kapiloff and Lynn Kapiloff were publishers of both the Montgomery and Prince George’s County Sentinel newspapers.

It’s another loss of weekly coverage for the county after the Prince George’s Gazette closed in 2015 and it creates a significant gap in local news coverage for the county.

The closure represents a pattern that’s happening all over the country: local print newspapers are hemorrhaging advertising dollars as social media, radio and television rapidly absorb those dollars because of their sheer ability to deliver millions of eyeballs and ears to their platforms.

The progress of technology and efficiency is laudable. Moving forward and change is a good thing. And certainly, that which gives everyone the ability to receive and – perhaps more importantly – share and exchange ideas at the fingertips of billions around the world is a triumph of human accomplishment. It levels the playing field for the next big, good thing---as long we’re willing to manage the proliferation of equally big, bad things.

And it makes sense that advertisers should want to move toward mechanisms that “guarantee” the greatest volume of numbers exposed to their product or service.

But these things can’t be the only factors in determining whether local media platforms survive. If after all, it ultimately comes down to who has the most money to represent a community, how long will it be before only those with the most money determine the direction of a community? How long will it be before some ideas, conversations, and stories never make it to the main spotlight because they simply aren’t in the interest, run counter to the interests – or are just considered too small – to be recognized by the biggest spender? And while the volume of unfettered ideas is a good thing, we still need the accountability of fact-driven content to ensure a healthy public debate.

So what now?

We will create a new model for local media development and delivery. It’s up to us to learn to speak to the next evolution in community communication. Just as the drum and smoke signals led to the town crier and then the newsstand, local media will have to reconstruct and then reboot in a format that befits the 21st century. It can be done and as sure as necessity has always bred invention, it will eventually happen.

But local communities will have to play an active role. Homeowners, small business owners, educators, faith leaders and consumers will have to come together around a simple need: support.

Local media must be supported not because it provides the longest reach but because it provides the first line of cohesion for the communities they serve. It helps to bind a community together under common goals, reveal common challenges and to face common threats. Local media help communities to establish an identity and to celebrate the character and culture that make them unique.

From property values to fairness in education, from home grown heroes to high school champions, local media bring highlights those stories and sheds a spotlight on dark corners of corruption. Without local media, local communities lose much of this ground—even if they don’t immediately feel the loss.

I worked with The Sentinel for a short time in the mid-1990s and the operation always covered more than it had resources to occupy. But Bernie and Lynn Kapiloff, publishers of The Sentinel, understood that a big part of the mission of the paper was to fulfill its namesake.

Famed columnist Jimmy Breslin never worried much about the passing of journalism’s newspaper format to digital. A good story is a good story, he would say. They will just find new ways to tell them. I believe that, too. Here’s a salute to the Sentinel, and one to the Sentinel that comes next.