Throughout its decades-long run, the Norwood News has served as a trusted source for hyper-local news. They have reported on housing, transportation, small business, and more. The news is always about our community and about us.

 

Even before taking office, I flipped eagerly through its pages, checking to see if any of my friends, neighbors, or relatives were featured in the photographs or quoted in the articles. Now, as a city council member, I appreciate more than ever the platform it provides to tell the stories of people from The Bronx.

 

The end of the Norwood News reflects a broader, troubling trend taking place across the country. Local papers are abandoned or subsumed into larger corporate machines. The result is a standardized, corporatized media in which local stories are obscured and minimized, if reported at all.

 

The Bronx has already felt this loss more than most counties. Our borough has long been under-covered by the citywide press, treated as an afterthought compared to Manhattan or Brooklyn. Papers like the Norwood News gave Bronxites a place where our neighborhoods were the headlines, not footnotes. Without outlets rooted in our community, we risk The Bronx becoming even more invisible in the broader media landscape, our concerns folded into vague, citywide coverage that misses what makes Norwood, Bedford Park, and Van Cortlandt Village distinct.

 

Where else can one read about the businesses and institutions that are the lifeblood of our neighborhood? The Norwood News’ hyperlocal focus has also kept city agencies, landlords, and elected officials accountable. Longtime readers will remember its reporting on some of the district’s most consequential fights, from exposing the NYPD’s lack of transparency around crime statistics to shining a light on the treatment of tenants by housing corporations and developers. Recent reporting on the rent hike fight at Tracey Towers has catapulted the issue into citywide discussion.

The Norwood News has helped ensure transparency in local government. Since I first ran for city council, I have been able to reach my constituents through a trusted source residents can count on. It has covered the bills I’ve introduced and passed, including legislation to ease the affordable housing application process, as well as my press conference to improve safety at Williamsbridge Oval and my sustained campaign for accountability at our city agencies.

 

I am incredibly grateful for the decades of service to our neighborhood that the Norwood News and its staff have provided. I especially want to thank Síle Moloney for her diligent reporting. Going forward, I am committed to finding ways to help fill that gap, whether through direct outreach to residents, support for the local outlets that remain, or new approaches to keeping this community informed. The Bronx deserves a press that knows its streets and its people, and I am saddened that we will no longer have our cornerstone, hometown outlet.

The end of the Norwood News is a loss for every resident of this district, whether they read it every week or only picked it up once. It leaves a gap in how we understand our own neighborhood, and that gap will not be easy to fill. I hope other outlets, local leaders, and residents step up to keep telling the stories that make the Bronx worth covering.

 

Eric Dinowitz is the council member for New York City’s 11^th city council district which broadly covers the Northwest Bronx.