Tom Noonan

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Tom Noonan, now retired, published community newspapers in the suburbs of Cleveland, Cincinnati and Denver. He was the 2006 recipient of the Dean S. Lesher lifetime achievement award from Suburban Newspapers of America.

You've probably seen more than one cartoon showing a row of fish lined up largest to smallest. All have their mouths open and each is ready to gulp down the smaller one in front of it. That's the media business today.

I'm a retired community newspaper publisher. Not too long ago my segment truly was known as "Local-Local." Then the small weekly became part of the community newspaper group, which was purchased by the suburban newspaper chain, which was acquired by a multi-market publishing chain. With some notable exceptions, small private owners relinquished (often at great profit) their papers to publicly held entities.

In many cases Local-Local isn't very local any more. It's hard to devote resources to covering a small town's zoning board meetings and dance to the tune of a 10-Q at the same time. Local papers have given way to multi-community coverage, reporters are spread mighty thin and coverage focuses on what communities have in common rather than the unique attributes of each small town.

A problem and an opportunity.

There's still a thirst out there for very local news and the publisher/entrepreneur who is willing (and able) to think small will find an eager audience for his/her effort. Today many of the chain papers have cookie-cutter websites, with one-design-fits-all pages for each of the communities they serve.
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