This July, Laurel residents are receiving their inaugural edition of The Laurel Independent.  The new monthly newspaper is powered by former Laurel Leader editors and a group of citizens dedicated to bringing local community news back home to Laurel.

The Laurel Independent joins the 18-year-old Hyattsville Life & Times and the two-year-old College Park Here & Now, becoming the third newspaper produced by the Hyattsville-based non-profit Streetcar Suburbs Publishing. 

How fitting for this new newspaper to land where it has: Streetcar Suburbs Publishing is named for the old line that ran from the District out to Laurel.

We’d like to thank our former Chief Financial Officer Chris Currie, who despite having stepped down from the board of Streetcar Suburbs in May, continued his tireless volunteerism in organizing the logistics of the transition to three newspapers.

In other good news for your local newspapers, this past June, the HL&T and CPH&N were awarded first and second place for Best Local News Coverage in the National Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. 

Our community newspaper is a community effort. Volunteers send us tips and pictures, and write the majority of our content. There are at least a dozen volunteers among your neighbors you can thank for each edition you recieve. To volunteer or to submit an article, letter or opinion piece for our consideration, please reach out to kit@hyattsvillelife.com. 

To donate to strengthen our hyperlocal news organization, go to omella.com/streetcarsuburbs.