Local news | Your Delray Boca

April 9 was Local News Day in America.

As a former journalist, I still subscribe to newspapers, blogs and social media feeds that cover the state of the industry. They talk about the work. They typically don’t celebrate, because frankly there’s not much to celebrate.

Newspapers have been hit hard — real hard — by the Internet. Artificial intelligence poses yet another threat, siphoning off the web traffic that already-dwindling ad revenue depends on. These trends lead to cuts in local newsrooms, and when that happens, we lose something very important: our ability to be informed, to connect, to understand the issues and to make good decisions.

Good journalism holds those in power accountable. Strong local reporting builds community pride, because when you tell the stories of people trying to make a difference, it serves as an impetus for involvement and connection. That ultimately makes for closer, more resilient communities.

At its best, local news serves as the equivalent of the office water cooler — a place we could go to learn what was happening at City Hall, at our schools, in sports, business and culture. It was one of those coveted “third places” where a community could gather around shared information and actually talk to each other. What a concept.

Much of it has gone away. And we are left sorting through the slop served to us by billionaire gatekeepers. Yuck.

Give me the days when the local publisher and editor lived down the street, showed up at Chamber meetings, had breakfast at The Green Owl and sat through long city commission meetings so they could soak up the flavor of the community they were part of.

I think of how much people will miss about their communities if there is nobody there to tell its stories. Consider our own Delray Beach. All the wonderful characters who came here and wrote chapters.

I think about the people who shaped this town as I travel its streets.

When I pull across Lake Ida Road and drive by the Achievement Center for Children & Families I think of its founder Nancy Hurd. Barely 5 feet tall, Nancy built an early childhood learning center that started in a church and grew into a national model. Nancy was a force of nature. I adored her and I relished telling her story as a reporter for the Delray Times in the 80s and 90s.

The center did such a great job that Governor Lawton Chiles came to visit and see for himself. “Walkin Lawton” they called him. He reminded me of Abe Lincoln. The visit was tightly choreographed. But Nancy made sure I had an exclusive with the Governor. We weren’t the biggest paper in the market, but she appreciated our desire to tell her story with care and depth. She took care of me and thousands of others.

As I head east to Swinton and south to my office, I drive by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church where my friend Father Chip Stokes used to serve before becoming the Bishop of New Jersey. Chip was an early leader in race relations, a calm port in any storm. Chip is a quiet leader who cares deeply for people, especially those new to America who came here seeking opportunity.

Newspapers covered his ministry. And we were better off for knowing about his work.

If not for local newspapers, we would not have known about all the volunteers who worked for our police department. Back in the day, we read about all the World War II veterans who retired to Florida and decided to volunteer their time as Citizens on Patrol.

I remember reading and writing stories about Leo Erbstein. Major Erbstein as he was known, with his handlebar mustache, sharp sense of humor, and deep commitment to helping our police department was a larger-than-life character. Unforgettable.

A few weeks ago, I went to see my friend Shelly Pittleman hold court at the Weisman Community Center in West Delray.

On Fridays, Shelly packs the room with seniors for a program he calls “Positively Pittleman.” He reads news stories, riffs on current events and invites guest speakers to share their stories.

It was wonderful to witness. Just pure magic. And I thought, this should be in a community newspaper. Everyone should know about this program and about Shelly who spends just about every waking moment volunteering in the community.

Yes, we miss a lot when we lose our storytellers.

Yeah, yeah, I know that sometimes journalists get it wrong. As a former elected official, I used to get angry when reporters missed the mark. But they are not the enemy of the people, in many ways, community journalism was the glue that bound us together.

There are many reasons why we feel estranged from one another: divisive politics, the dangerous algorithms that keep us angry, too much time in front of screens. All of it contributes to the toxicity we experience. But I believe the diminishment of local journalism is also a reason for our estrangement — maybe more than we realize.

Strong local news builds strong communities. It’s just that simple.

But local journalism costs money, and the advertising and subscription model isn’t cutting it anymore. I think part of the answer is philanthropy. That’s not easy either, because local news — while critically important — is competing against an ocean of good causes.

Still, I maintain we are at risk when stories go untold, when local officials look around and see that nobody is watching, and when issues go uncovered.

We are at a critical juncture in Palm Beach County. A stunning amount of news is happening all at once. West Palm Beach is becoming a major city before our eyes. Financial titans are pouring into the county to set up offices. Real estate is changing rapidly. Technology is transforming our lives and our society, and while that’s exciting, there are troubling things to be concerned about.

Right now, much of it is going unreported or underreported. That puts us in peril.

Journalism may not solve these issues, but it shines a light on them. And when that light dims — or is doused — we all lose.

Loss of an artistic giant

We got the new sad news over the weekend that Lou Tyrell, a titan of local theater passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.

Lou was the founding director of Theatre Lab on the campus of FAU and served as an Eminent Scholar in the Arts at the university.

Lou was well known and highly regarded in the local arts community. Theatre Lab is a treasure. If you haven’t attended, I highly recommend that you do.

In honor of Lou’s life and contributions, Theatre Lab is dedicating the 2026 Owl New Play Festival, which opened this weekend, to his memory.

I was recently back in touch with Lou. I got to know him when he was involved in Delray’s Arts Garage some years ago.

We reconnected when I started writing plays. He was a kind man, generous with his time and knowledge.

He will be deeply missed by all those who knew him. But his influence will last.

I Miss the Water Cooler

Where have you gone?

Often, I find myself sitting at meetings when someone will say the following.

“Can we get any press on this?”

“This is awesome, people ought to know about it.”

As an old newspaper guy who has dabbled in public relations, I really sympathize with the desire to spread the news. There used to be a community water cooler, but sadly it is gone.

That does not mean that content is gone, or that news is no longer being made, it just means that the outlets have changed or gone away, the audience is fragmented (drinking from a wide array of water coolers) or tuned out completely.

It wasn’t always like this.

I have absolutely no beef with change or with technology; wouldn’t matter if I did, but I generally embrace both. I like social media, can’t imagine life without the Internet and love that I can read the New York Times on my phone at lunch.

But I also miss community journalism and feel that somehow we have been diminished as locals when the water cooler went away.

Pre-Internet and for a few years after Google, if you lived in Boca Raton or Delray Beach you could keep up with the local news by reading the Monday-Thursday Papers, the Sun-Sentinel, The Boca News and the Palm Beach Post. There was also Boca Magazine, The Beachcomber, Native Sun and a few other local magazines that seemed to come and go.

When I served on the City Commission from 2000-07, we were regularly covered by three daily newspapers and sometimes four (the Miami Herald) if something big was happening. We were also covered by a few weeklies.

The coverage was abundant. If you wanted to stay informed, you could easily do so.

When I moved here in 1987, I took a job at the old Monday-Thursday Papers which was one of the largest chains of community newspapers in the country and the largest in the southeast. We had papers from Jupiter to Miami with the Delray and Boca Papers printed twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.

It was a great job if you like to work hard and make little money; which was fine when you are in your 20s and looking for adventure. I wrote between 5-7 stories a week, with a set of news briefs and a police blotter. This was done in the days when you had to go to the Police Department and ask for the blotter and sift through reports looking for interesting or noteworthy crimes. Today, it’s all online as are the backup materials for City Commission meetings, Planning Board meetings etc.

I liked to get out of the office and frankly we had no choice—our City Editor a grizzled veteran named Tom Sawyer –(yes his real name) would bark at us if we were hanging around the newsroom after deadline.

“Nothing newsworthy is happening here,” he would remind his young charges. “News doesn’t come in here and find you, you have to find it.” And so we did.

We sat at the counters at Ken’s and Hazel’s, visited barber shops, talked up HOA presidents and rode with cops and detectives and cultivated sources at City Hall.

We covered the news and also prided ourselves on doing what they call “enterprise” reporting, covering trends, writing features, doing investigatory pieces and in-depth journalism.

Much to my wife’s chagrin, I still have lots and lots of those old newspapers sitting in boxes in my garage. Sometimes, if I’m bored or nostalgic, I’ll pull a few out and they never cease to amaze me.

Details you forget, stories that were big at the time that were soon forgotten (Jacobson’s anyone?) and quotes from people who have long left the scene and were once so important and influential.

It’s great fun to read and its local history too.

The papers were pretty good back then. The Boca News had Darcie Lunsford and Wayne Tompkins and Skip Sheffield and Vin Mannix and they were all great reporters. We had Larry Kahn, Debbie Stern, John Dichtl, Stacey Trapani, Eva Fellows, Judy Vik, Kate Confare and Jim Baker writing sports. They were great writers and smart people too.

On Friday nights, we would meet at Dirty Moe’s in Boca and tell war stories from the week that was…what politician hung up on us, what well-known name we saw in a police report, what the local gadflies said at that week’s Council meeting.

Darcie and I used to sit in the back row at Delray City Hall and fantasize about Darcie running for mayor someday. I would be her campaign manager.

We would look at all the faces of the old mayors that lined that walls of City Hall- the décor dated even back then -and tried and imagine Darcie’s portrait up there.

But Darcie was smart. She went on to marry a high ranking Delray police officer and began covering the real estate beat for the South Florida Business Journal before going into the field herself.

We used to compete back then, but we were friendly. I used to go to dinner with the Sentinel and Post reporters at the old Delray Mall before commission meetings. We would be upset if we were scooped, but we were friends too.

I think civic life was different back then. Citizens seemed more informed. The space devoted to local news was larger and people read what you wrote.

More people voted back in those days too and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. When you are informed you vote. When you don’t know what’s going on, local elections can pass you by. And that’s a shame.

Here’s an example, in 1990 over 10,000 voters (41.5 percent of registered voters) went to the polls in Delray to elect a new mayor (Tom Lynch) and two city commissioners. Delray was a lot smaller town 25 years ago so 10,000 voters is an astonishing figure.

Can you name the Delray candidate who received the most votes in history?

Betcha can’t, but if you guessed David Randolph you’d be correct. Mr. Randolph got 7,720 votes in ’90.

In March 2015, about 16 percent of the city’s voters showed up, or 6,944 people. The winning mayoral candidate earned 3,703 votes, less than half what commission candidates polled in 1990 and about 2,000 votes less than Mayor Lynch received in a heated three way race.

I think the water cooler has something to do with that.

Sure, there are some local publications out there, but the dailies have really retrenched, the Monday Thursday Papers (which used to be on everybody’s lawn) are long gone and the monthlies are just not frequent enough.

The irony is…even with technology there is a bigger need and niche today than ever.

To paraphrase Simon & Garfunkel “where have you gone Boca News? A community turns its lonely eyes to you.”

What Happens When We Stop The Presses

I Miss the Water Cooler