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I don't know how many people in the neighborhood noticed, but the free Sunset News newspaper which for many years was a source of local news and coverage seems to have disappeared. Or at least the title seems to have been incorporated into a strictly advertising rag by the same publisher tilted the Bay Ridge Home Reporter and Sunset News. The new free format and manifestation has no reporting of any kind whatsoever. There is of course, a paid paper The Home Reporter that covers most of southern Brooklyn, but not Sunset Park exclusively. In it's heyday the Sunset News with the small staff of reporters provided locals with pertinent news about local politicians and issues vital to the community. The weekly publication also afforded local businesses a venue for advertising to their local community. It had a print run of 30,000 copies, though it's hard to guess how many were actually read. I suppose the economics of publishing a print newspaper in this age of the Internet was no longer feasible. I assume there was also an issue as to whether the advertising was effective considering the expense. If my memory serves me a one page ad for a one week run was well over $300. There are much cheaper and more effective alternatives these days than that. Falling advertising revenues and rising costs of publishing may have had a hand in it's imminent demise. Competition also may have played a role as there are other free publications covering news like the Brooklyn Courier. The problem is of course, that they do not cover the nabe exclusively as the Sunset News did and in addition have poor circulation in this area.
We are sorry to see the paper dissappear, I assume that the reporting staff has been laid off and is unlikely to be replaced. I would hope that the creation of this vacuum will be filled by some alternative and we will once again have news coverage of local events. In the meantime it appears that we bloggers in the area will have to act as citizen reporters and hold our local politicians feet to the fire by making sure that our neighbors are well informed of activities pertaining to our local area.
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