Orleans Hub reader grateful for local news site

Editor:

I was very glad to read about the change in ownership at the Pennysaver and Hub, as it appears that there will be little outward change. Don’t mess with success.

Tom Rivers is the heart and soul of Orleans Hub. When I see Tom appear at a community event with his smiling face and his camera, I know that the world will hear about something that makes us proud of our home, or something that needs to be fixed.

Tom gets the names and the details right, and can be counted on to report the situation as it stands, without bias or spin. Those of us who log in several times a day, or watch the announcements on Facebook, appreciate the oasis that is Orleans Hub in the sandstorm desert of society today.

I grew up reading the Lyndonville Enterprise, a newspaper that appeared almost by magic from a mysterious little building that is now a parking lot behind the laundromat; I will never forget the web-fed printing press that took up two stories of that building, and the mostly hand-set type.

When I was a teenager I worked in the job shop at the Medina Journal-Register, which at the time was still set in hot lead from linotype. Both papers reported on school sports, who made the honors list at high school, who was visiting from out of town, farm news, and local businesses. We used to joke that they would go to the library to see if someone had borrowed the book, and that the phone directory had a Yellow Page. Life in a small town was important, even if it wasn’t Albion or Washington DC.

We can still get some of that in Tom and Ginny Kropf’s splendid work that appears on Orleans Hub. I admire the fact that it is a free site, although I would subscribe in a heartbeat.

When I do business with a Hub advertiser, I am careful to let them know I saw their ad. With the societal changes driving conventional newspapers out of business, the Orleans Hub is more than worth preserving; it is crucial. I am very glad to learn that the ownership structure will allow it to continue and grow.

Douglas Pratt

Lyndonville