Every city needs a school district.
Every city needs police and fire protection
Every city needs a sense of community, and
Every city needs a community newspaper
For more than 23 years, the West Haven Voice has filled a vacuum that was left when larger daily newspapers took over and closed community newspapers up and down the state. We took as our motto “By and For West Haven” to show West Haven people were going to report city and community events and activities, the good, the bad, the controversial. It is something newspapers in the city have done for decades. We strived to cover local sports to highlight the activities of the children of West Haven. We printed the honor rolls so the accomplishments of students could be shared with family members.
Community newspapers need community support. We’ve always said, “If praise were money, we’d be rich.” Even over the annual shutdown, we received calls from people looking for their Voice, and were disappointed the paper was on a two-week hiatus.
Community support is important, and community support has to be two ways. Over the last year, revenues for the paper have declined. We still have our readers, both online and with the newspaper, but businesses and professional organizations have not been as supportive as in the past.
The problem has become critical and in order to save this lifelong work many of us have undertaken, we have made the decision to go to publication every two weeks, beginning with the current issue. The next edition will be Feb. 6. This will be the print schedule unless and until revenues and support from the advertising community increase.
This is a difficult decision, and one we do not take lightly. If you have your events we will cover them. Politics, we will still monitor. A wedding or engagement, we only ask $25 for a picture and short write-up; obituaries are $50.
We are asking you, our readers, to become our advocates. If you think a business in West Haven, Orange, New Haven or Milford should be advertising in the Voice, tell them and then tell us about it.
We want to continue to be West Haven’s Voice. We thank you for your continued support and believe we can and will come back stronger in the months and years to come.
When you let someone invest in you paper to control what is said about our new school is the day you lost me. That was the day you went down hill.
As a former West Havener, one who grew up here, and graduated from the old High School I frequently check-in to check on the town news. Every now and then I see a story, or a person that takes me back and makes it seem like I never left. Have you considered charging a fee for electronic subscription? Many papers do, of course most of them are daily. You carry many of the features of the old “Town Crier,” a weekly that I delivered house-to-house back in the 50’s, along with the “Journal Courier.,” a morning paper at the time. Would hate to see it go the way so many other things have gone.
Hope you can keep on keepin’ on.
Pete