Coastal community rallies around its weekly newspaper

Imagine this:

A weekly newspaper covering the rural coastal side of a big Bay Area county gets into financial trouble. It turns out the publisher has been subsidizing the paper out of his own pocket for years—because he loves journalism and he loves his community. And now he’s out of money.

The community responds in a manner right out of It’s a Wonderful Life.

"Almost every day when people wrote in to renew their paper, someone would say, ‘Here’s an extra twenty bucks.’ We got lots of people who just gave us $100. Even people who didn’t hardly have two nickels to rub together stepped up and gave us $5.

"And then sixteen of them wrote in and said ‘Raise your cover price. Take it up to a dollar. We need the Light because we don’t have any city governments out here. And the Light is providing us with a forum for us to work out civic issues.’ "

Last year, I read the SF Weekly’s story about the Point Reyes Light’s financial problems. I saved article because the story of Light publisher David Mitchell was so inspiring.

Mitchell has been contributing to his community as a journalist for decades. He won a Pulitzer in 1979 for risking his life while investigating Synanon. And now his neighbors have rallied around this publisher who has given so much to his community. Now, that’s inspiring.