It’s hard to believe, but this coming October marks the 20th anniversary of the Norwood News. Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit support corporation of Montefiore Medical Center, launched the paper as a monthly in 1988 so that neighborhood residents and organizations could communicate, raise issues and have a source of information for the news that matters most – local news!

Despite a zillion cable channels and four daily newspapers, most city neighborhoods are starved for local news they can use. Just take a gander at the newspaper in your hands from front to back. Imagine there were a farmers market in a part of the neighborhood that you don’t usually frequent and nobody told you about it. Or what if there was a hearing about blasting at the reservoir and there was nowhere to find out that it was even happening? Ditto a hearing about the fate of a massive vacant landmark like the Kingsbridge Armory. And speaking of the Armory, the Norwood News has been covering the Armory relentlessly since it was vacated by the National Guard in 1993. Think a developer would have ever been selected if a newspaper hadn’t held the city’s feet to the fire all that time?

We think all neighborhoods — not just the ones that can afford it — deserve hyper-local news that greases the wheels of civic engagement and amplifies community improvement efforts. That’s why we started the Mount Hope Monitor almost two years ago with the help of the Mount Hope Housing Company and formed the West Bronx News Network which links our two papers with the Highbridge Horizon, another nonprofit Bronx newspaper. We also are looking forward to our growing collaboration with yet another nonprofit paper (notice a trend here?) — the Hunts Point Express, published by Bernard Stein and his Hunter College journalism students. You heard it here first: The Bronx is a hotbed of local media experimentation!

We’re going to use the Norwood News’ anniversary not just to celebrate the paper’s accomplishments, but also to continue to raise awareness of and build support for all these efforts and new related projects. We’ll keep you updated in the coming weeks on the blog (see editorial above) and the newspaper.

In the meantime, we’d like to thank our advertisers — without whom this paper would not exist — and, of course, our devoted readers.

And we salute all the staff, interns, and freelancers who have produced the paper over the last two decades.

Have a great summer, everybody. See you on the blog!