By RHIANNON EVANS
College Park’s monthly newspaper is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year at a time when local news organizations are closing in record numbers.
College Park Here & Now, operated by the nonprofit Streetcar Suburbs Publishing, sends a 16-page printed newspaper to every address in the city and publishes a digital edition and a weekly newsletter.
“I think that local news, local journalism, is more important now than ever,” Sharon O’Malley, the newspaper’s managing editor since February 2024, said. “There’s a lot of activity at the federal level right now, and we need to know all of that. But more important for us is, how does that affect College Park?”
Still, according to the Medill Local News Initiative’s 2024 report from Northwestern University, more than 3,200 local news organizations across the country have ceased operation since 2005.
Despite this trend, O’Malley said College Park residents have let her know the newspaper is important to them.
Mark Goodson, who served as College Park Here & Now’s first managing editor from May 2020 to June 2023, said readers have been supportive since the beginning.
“These [residents] care about their neighborhood,” Goodson said. “They are active. They are involved. … It didn’t take me too long to understand how valuable a newspaper would be to the residents.”
The publication’s nonprofit business model is another factor in its success, according to O’Malley.
“Our board of directors is all volunteer, and our reporters are all volunteers,” she said. “You know, in College Park, I’m lucky to have University of Maryland (UMD) students who can get [class] credit for working for the newspaper, but I think that we can attribute a lot of our success to our business model.”
Starting a newspaper during the pandemic wasn’t easy, Goodson said. He credited Mayor Fazlul Kabir, then a member of the College Park City Council, other councilmembers and former Streetcar Suburbs Publishing Vice President Chris Currie, an administrator at St. Jerome Academy in Hyattsville, for getting the paper off the ground.
Goodson noted that the city continues to show its support through a four-page advertising insert in each print edition. “I don’t think there are too many cities in America [where] you could say that would work,” he said.
Still, he noted, “It’s [the community] that deserves the credit for [the newspaper’s] being what it is because it’s a very unique place where a print newspaper could launch during a pandemic.”
Another key element of the publication’s success is its hyperlocal focus, said University of O’Malley, who noted that every article has a clear connection to the city.
“You can get the big stories about College Park from The [Washington] Post or WTOP radio, but the really local, everyday stuff, they’re not going to cover that. We are,” said O’Malley, who has lived in College Park’s Yarrow neighborhood since 1998.
Associate Editor Jalen Wade, who joined the staff in September, said interacting with College Park residents is the best part of the job.
“I really love being at an event, interviewing someone, and telling them what paper I’m with, and they go, ‘Oh, I get that. I receive your paper. I think I read a few of your stories,” Wade, a UMD graduate, said.
Kit Slack, Streetcar Suburbs Publishing’s executive director, said she expects College Park Here & Now will continue to evolve and hopes it eventually will deliver the news in both Spanish and English.
Part of her job, Slack said, is to keep the nonprofit, which also publishes Hyattsville Life & Times and The Laurel Independent, in business.
“We do want to grow other sources of revenue so that we can offer people the kind of in-depth journalism that comes from the sustained attention of paid journalists over time,” Slack said.
College Park Here & Now will celebrate its five-year anniversary with a free panel discussion about hyperlocal news on June 14 at 4 p.m. at the University Park Church of the Brethren, located at 4413 Tuckerman St. in University Park, followed by a reception. Panelists will include representatives from the area’s local news media.