Out of Print: The Unmaking of American News

Eighteen months ago, the Reporter went up for sale. Shortly thereafter, its publisher took it off the market with the promise to continue its publication through the end of the 2025 calendar year. There were no promises beyond that.

We've just turned the page onto the 2026 calendar year. So, it's time to find out. Will the Reporter carry on? And just as importantly, we'll explore the reasons why the Reporter met the fate it did.

Seaon 1 tells the story of the Shelter Island Reporter, a local weekly newspaper that's fighting to stay alive. I lived on Shelter Island and wrote for the Reporter from 2007-09. In 2024, when I found out it might shut down, I was drawn into the story of the paper's fate.

My great thanks to Felicity G. Williams, who scored and wrote the original music for this season. I would also like to thank Aaron Bernstein, Jesse Denney, Dani Henion, Martini Jean and Jon Schnaars for their voiceover work.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok at @outofprintnews.

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow it on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter.

When I walked into the Shelter Island Public Library in June, 2024 to listen to reporter publisher Andrew Olsen explain why he might shut down the Reporter, I saw almost nothing but gray.

Even though I was approaching the age of 50, I was the youngest person in attendance for that meeting of about 150 people.

I didn't feel much room for optimism about the future of local newspapers.

But when I went out in search of the future of local journalism, I found a lot to be hopeful about.

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Aaron Bernstein.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok at @outofprintnews.

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow it on Isntagram at @shelterislandreporter.

What's it mean to work for your local community newspaper? What does a longstanding local newspaper mean to the community it covers?

Joining me for this panel discussion were Jackson Rohrer, Reporter sportswriter and Shelter Island High School junior; Amanda Bright, journalism professor and director of the Innovation Lab at the University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication; and the dean of that school, and my academic advisor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism about what's unique about being a local small town reporter- and the expectations your audience sets for you

A wise newspaper publisher once said that his staff's message to its potential audience should be, "We aren't the media. We're your hometown newspaper."

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok at @outofprintnews.

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow it on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter.

Due to the holiday, Episode 8 will drop on Wednesday, December 31st.

Shelter Island has undergone an extreme demographic shift since 2007. The houses are bigger. There are more people with more money. It's a lot more white collar than blue. At the same time, it's also grayer, more impoverished and more racially diverse. How did such dramatic changes happen so quickly and what do they mean for the future?

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Aaron Bernstein and Martini Jean.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok at @outofprintnews.

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow it on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter.

Due to the holiday, Episode 7 will drop on Wednesday, December 24th.

It's whimsical, dreamy, a place where parents need not worry about their kids. Traffic's not a problem, nor is crime. And if you come home to find your front door is wide open, the first thought isn't that a burglar was too inconsiderate to close the door on the way out, but that a wild animal might be foraging through the refrigerator like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This is the Shelter Island town residents hold in their hearts.

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Jon Schnaars, Martini Jean and Jesse Denney.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and TikTok at @outofprintnews.

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow it on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter.

Nature abhors a vacuum. When there's no professional local news source to deliver the news, social media outlets are more than happy to take over. What you end up with is unvetted and unreliable, and oftentimes even worse than that. In the absence of local news, here's what you'll get.

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Aaron Bernstein and Martini Jean.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and TikTok at @outofprintnews.

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow it on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter.

Helicoptering in - a term for a reporter working for a publication outside the community coming in to do a story. The person helicoptering in usually has no connection or attachment to the community, and will be gone as soon as the story's finished. And that story will look a lot different than coverage of the same event from a local reporter and source.

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Dani Henion and Jesse Denney.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and TikTok at @outofprintnews

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow the paper on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter

Think about what you would lose if your local newspaper closed – a public advocate for the community, a forum to celebrate it, fun gossip – and what that same community would do in order to keep its paper alive were it on the verge of shutting down.

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Dani Henion.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and Tiktok at @outofprintnews

Also, please read the Shelter Island Reporter and follow the paper on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter

Shelter Island - a small island at the East End of Long Island town publicly accessible only by ferry boat. There's no way to sum it up in just a few words. That's what makes its local paper, the Shelter Island Reporter, so important. It's the town square - to celebrate the town and community, fight over it, enjoy the high school sports triumphs and gloat and gossip over the police blotter.

Welcome to Shelter Island through the pages of the Reporter and to the people who, love it or hate it, count on reading the paper every Thursday.

Original music and scoring by Felicity G. Williams. Voiceovers by Dani Henion and Aaron Bernstein.

Please check out my Patreon page and follow me on Instagram and TikTok at @outofprintnews

Also check out the Shelter Island Reporter and on Instagram at @shelterislandreporter

This is an eyewitness account to the demise of local newspapers... a crisis is a story that's playing out all over the nation.

Season 1 dives into the struggles of the Shelter Island Reporter, a local newspaper serving an island town of 2,800 people near the eastern tip of New York's Long Island.

Last year the paper I worked for from 2007-09 was on the verge of shutting down, but it received a lifeline through the end of 2025. There are no guarantees after that.

Will it still be in print come 2026? And if so, how?