The disappearing "Commons": The need for local newspapers of wide distribution

 One of the great losses in public discourse in recent years has been the demise of local newspapers like the Gazette Papers in Montgomery County. The Gazette was a weekly, distributed free to every household in Montgomery County, regardless of ideology.  It was supported by advertising, of which there was a lot.  When the post-Graham era owner of the Washington Post, which had owned the Gazette Papers, decided to close them down -- and then later to take down the valuable web-based archive -- he did our community a great disservice.

This was brought home to me in the process of doing what so many fellow-septuagenarians must do:  Go through old boxes of papers and at least cull them down so that their children will not someday have the burden of doing so.

In 2005, I was involved in the struggle to update the Montgomery County Public Schools' health education curriculum to include accurate information on sexual orientation and gender identity.  When MCPS was blind-sided by a lawsuit that derailed the process, there was a huge amount of public debate of the matter, particularly in the pages of the Gazette, which provided a full and fair forum for this debate.  That debate, I believe, helped the public make up its collective mind by listening to all sides, and similarly helped public officials -- both elected and appointed -- to figure out the best course of action.  As it eventually did, adopting a far more comprehensive curriculum that followed the wisdom of every mainstream American medical and mental health professional association. See here.

Below is a picture (as I note above, the Gazette archive is no longer available) of the May 25, 2005 Community Forum/Letters to the Editor page.  Would that there were such widely distributed venues today.

P.S.:  The letter copied below is from May 15, 2005 page. It provides what I would like to think is a quaint, if disturbing, outlook.  Ten years later, for example, the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to bar same sex couples from marrying.  But it appears that this sort of mode of thought is still active in many places, and even in the McConnell-stacked Supreme Court.