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More news of the North Country

Starting this week, we have been publishing more news from all over New York’s North Country. That comes through a newly enhanced partnership with several other daily newspapers spread throughout the far corners of the region: the Post-Star of Glens Falls, the Watertown Daily Times (and its affiliated papers such as the Malone Telegram) and yes, even our old rival, the Press-Republican of Plattsburgh.

Such a partnership would have been unthinkable even five years ago. The urge among us newspaper hounds to scoop the others on stories runs deep. But now we realize we have more to gain than to lose. We each want to fill our papers with more news, and news of other parts of northern New York is often more relevant than news of faraway places. We can’t afford to send our staff reporters all over the region when there’s plenty of news to cover here, but given the choice, one of our editors would probably rather offer our readers an interesting story on a southern Adirondack railroad controversy, or a Plattsburgh cryptocurrency clash that may soon hit the similarly cheap-power communities of Tupper Lake and Lake Placid, than an Associated Press story from California or Delaware.

For more than three years now, we have been publishing these North Country papers’ stories about New York’s 21st Congressional District, its representative Elise Stefanik and her political challengers. It’s such a gigantic district, covering all of northern New York, that it would be impossible for any of us to cover it comprehensively on our own.

If anyone predicted this would enable some of us to slack and let the others carry the load, they were wrong. Rather, it has spurred our reporters into positive competition, to do more and better coverage because it will be seen and scrutinized by more readers. This has already led to a much better informed electorate, and in the near future we hope it will also lead to a culture of award-winning political journalism in our part of the country.

Credit is due to Ken Tingley and Perry White, editors of the Post-Star and Watertown Daily Times, respectively, for coming up with the idea in 2014. Press-Republican Editor Lois Clermont (whom we congratulate on her March 23 retirement after 46 years with the paper) and Enterprise Managing Editor Peter Crowley embraced it right away, and together they worked out the best practices. They gradually found themselves wanting to pick up each other’s non-political stories as well, and in February Tingley suggested something that was radical, and yet not really: making each other’s papers an open book in which we can pick up whatever we want.

Last Friday, March 16, the four editors and Enterprise Publisher Catherine Moore met over lunch at the Hotel Saranac, discussed it, and unanimously decided to go for it.

We even decided to share some of our staff opinion columns (such as Enterprise-turned-Post-Star writer Will Doolittle’s piece on Keene’s school play situation, published today) and editorials — not to replace our own, but to offer other North Country viewpoints as well. We’d rather give you another paper’s column on a North Country issue than another syndicated one about Trump.

Each newspaper will certainly prioritize its own staff’s local news for page 1, just as always, but now we have a lot more North Country news to fill our inside pages with. We won’t be able to fit it all — and we still believe it’s important to publish state, national and world news from the AP — but it’s wonderful to have better options.

For you, the consumer, it’s a win-win. We also think it helps reinforce trust in newspapers in general. We respect these other North Country journalists, and we trust their reporting to be accurate and fair. They do what we do, just in a different part of our region. There are some stylistic differences, and having that variety of voices in each paper gives our readers more that might interest them.

Honestly, we’re just testing this coalition out to see what we can do. It’s kind of scary, and kind of exciting. We are thrilled to be able to give you more give you more.

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