This week, we celebrate National Newspaper Week, a time to reflect on the role newspapers have always played in our lives and the way the industry has adapted through the years.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written on the importance of community journalism, yet the faces here at Lehigh Valley Press are virtually the same. Collectively, the four editors of our eight weekly editions total 115 years here. Many of our freelancers have been writing columns and covering municipal beats since the very beginning — people like Julie Beck and Liz Hahn, who started writing for the first edition of Whitehall-Coplay Press back in 1992.

They, as well as many others, are what community journalism is all about. They love where they live, and they love to write about the great stuff that happens there.

Community newspapers cover stories about your township government, your school district and even your neighborhood. If an event has a national scope, we concentrate on how it affects you locally.

We make sure our readers know that you’ve celebrated an anniversary, that you’re involved in the missions activities at your church and that your child made honor roll or scored a touchdown at last week’s game.

When I wrote on the subject back in 2015, the results of a National Newspaper Association showed about two-thirds of residents in small U.S. communities read their local newspaper.

The results stated that “community newspapers continue to be highly valuable to communities, as 94% of readers agreed that the newspapers were informative; 80% said that they and their families looked forward to reading the newspapers; 78% relied on the newspapers for local news and information; and 72% said the newspapers entertained them.

“These findings imply that the perceived values are true assets of community newspapers and hence should always be reckoned in order for the newspapers to continue to play an important role in people’s lives in the future, whether in print or online or both.”

We’ve always worked hard to be a “true asset” to you and your family.

A more recent NNA readership survey showed 90% of those respondents agreed their community newspaper kept them informed and 73% read their newspaper from cover to cover.

When I was in grad school, way back in the mid-1990s, I remember a class conversation surrounding a theory that print journalism was on its way toward extinction. All these years later, we continue to publish the printed piece.

We do recognize that some readers — in particular, younger generations — look to digital options for their news. Our website, lvpnews.com, provides that service by offering all the news with the click of a mouse instead of the turn of a page.

Social media aficionados can receive notifications, via Facebook and X, on what’s in the news each week.

No matter your preference for reading the news, we have you covered. We’ll tell you what’s happening at your municipal meetings, in your school classrooms and at your community parks.

At an Emerging Mind of Community Journalism conference, sponsored by the University of Alabama and reported when I wrote on the topic in 2015, participants were asked to create a list characterizing community journalism. They said community journalism is “intimate, caring and personal; it reflects the community and tells its stories; and it embraces a leadership role.”

I hope that’s how you’d describe us.

Kelly Lutterschmidt

editor

Whitehall-Coplay Press

Northampton Press

Catasauqua Press