Reading This Newspaper Pays

What most subscribers and people that don't subscribe, don't know, it that this community newspaper saves you tax dollars. Potentially a lot of tax dollars!

Researchers have found, that not subscribing or not buying your comminity newspaper, will cost you money in the form of higher taxes and will increase the costs of running the local government! 

Dermont Murphy, Pengjie "Paul" Gao and Chang Lee are the three researches that decided to take a look at data harvested from American communities between 1996 and 2015. During this time 300 newspapers ceased daily publication or closed. The researcheres matched the data with interest rates local governments paid to finance municipal projects like roads and schools. 

So happens that communities with community newspapers tend to get better borrowing rates than the communities that were in the information dark places. They found that the increase in borrowing costs happened when the community newspaper disappeared. Go figure.

Not only were there differences in borrowing rates, they found that the differences can be substantial. Those substantial differences are costing paperless-communities millions of dollars on their government loans. And the costs of running their local government increases faster than communities with a newspaper. 

Why? Great question, so let me explain the obvious. Community newspapers hold government officials accountable by shining the light of day on their municipal dealings. Healthy, well read newspapers like The Constitution enjoy fierce and loyal readership by engaged and involved citizens. These loyal readers don't miss a beat. They pay attention to the details and are not hesitant to make their positions known. They represent the very critical component of freedom of the press. 

Thomas Jefferson said; "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." We agree with Mr. Jefferson.


(Most of the facts in this piece were harvested from an editorial previously published in, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, a newspaper)