The 65th birthday of The Local is cause for celebration on many levels, but perhaps most of all because of its unusual structure as an institution owned and operated by the community it serves. 

As the news industry has suffered in recent years and more papers have sought non-profit status to forestall closure, the Local has lived this model from its beginning, making it originally an outlier, but today uniquely positioned to survive in the present challenging environment.

Over my lifetime, I have always felt like a member of The Local family. As a newly engaged couple and newlyweds, my mom and dad volunteered at and occasionally wrote stories for the Local’s predecessor, The Chestnut Hill Cymbal.  

By the time I came along in 1957, Dad had embarked on his ‘real’ newspaper career and Mom was busy keeping me out of trouble. But I know they watched with interest as family friend (and mom’s tutor) Ellen Wells began with others to dream of what became the Chestnut Hill Local.

The Local was in our house every week, and even after we moved to Oregon, my grandmothers and other family members continued to pepper us with Local clippings that detailed everything from the Main Street Fair to zoning disputes to the inevitable marriages, births and deaths among our family and friends. 

Eventually, we were one of the few, if not the only, Local subscribers in the state of Oregon. Simply put, The Local was always there. A fixture. A part of us. Family.

Like any family, there were rocky times. Over the years, as I came back to Chestnut Hill and built a business here, I did not always agree with everything that came out of the paper. It was often irritating and occasionally infuriating and once in a while beyond the pale. But never, in all of those difficult years, did I ever think of it as less than a critical and defining part of what we are here in Chestnut Hill – a neighborhood family – warts and all. 

Over the past forty years, it has been my privilege to serve twice as a trustee of the Local, first in the 1980s and early 90s under the editorship of Marie Jones and more recently as the paper was transitioning to its present editor, Carla Robinson.

Both eras presented unbelievable challenges: During the ‘80s, while the finances were quite good, the Local survived an attempt to take the paper over for political purposes and a number of attempts to sell it. Editor Jones was a formidable adversary: The ‘Don’t Mess With Our Paper’ campaign landed Jones on the cover of the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, celebrating victory. And the paper survived its 20s, 30s and 40s as the community asset it was born to be.

Today, Editor Robinson faces very different, but no less daunting, challenges as the paper enters what I like to think of as ‘late middle age’ (particularly given that I am one year up on the Local!). 

While circulation and financial problems are endemic to many newspapers big and small, we all must believe that this community will never let the Local’s fire go out. It is up to each and every one of us to make sure that never happens. 

But today, let’s not dwell on the challenges and instead, let’s celebrate and raise a glass or two to our own amazing, homegrown and community-owned local paper. 

To The Local!

Richard W. Snowden

Chestnut Hill