It’s hard to understate the appeal of starting your own newspaper. Sometimes this can take the form of startups looking to fill a niche in the local news market. In other cases, it might involve using the form of a newspaper for another purpose — like novelist Benjamin Percy, who’s using the format for an upcoming horror story. And then there’s the teenage staff of The Ditch Weekly, whose Instagram profile proudly declares, “LOCAL NEWS BROUGHT TO YOU BY LOCAL KIDS.”
How exactly did this publication, focusing on local news in and around Montauk, come into being? The New York Times‘ Callie Holtermann looked into the origins of The Ditch Weekly — and chronicled where it might go from here. The newspaper began last year, when its creators were in eighth grade; now, they’ve returned with a more ambitious project, including a larger staff and a goal of releasing 20 issues this summer.
What can readers expect? Holtermann observed that this new venture “in some ways resembled a more wholesome little brother of The Drunken Canal, Dimes Square’s onetime paper of record.” While the ages of this paper’s creators may be unexpected, some of the decisions they’re facing are more familiar for publications large and small. The Times article details an intra-paper debate about whether to give The Ditch Weekly a TikTok presence.
Behind the Scenes at the Hamptons Polo Club
A summer night with clams, oysters and the oldest sport in the worldAs Holtermann described, the people behind The Ditch Weekly “are almost all year-round residents of the South Fork of Long Island.” That gives them a particular view of life in the Hamptons, but it also puts them in a time-honored tradition of DIY publications: people who saw an opening for a particular point of view and decided to build something new.
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