![]() Rivers has a new book out, a collection of his columns written for the Daily News, called "All Ears." Rivers said the book is "a love letter to the Daily News." (For more on Tom's books, click here.) He also published a regionally successful book based on his series of articles about working in GLOW-area farm fields called "Farm Hands." In his time with the Daily News, Rivers won several statewide writing and reporting awards. ( Daily News staffers are limited to 35-hour work weeks these days, according to Rivers.) "(Being a journalist) is actually a fun job and I wanted to do more, to work more than just 35 hours a week," Rivers said. Only time will tell how all that shakes out, but for Rivers, he's just focused on making his new venture a success, and he knows that will take hard work. Where the vast majority of online-only news sites are in urban or suburban settings, the Johnson's rural newspapers are likely the only ones in the nation facing competition from multiple start-ups in rural communities.īesides OrleansHub and The Batavian squaring off against the Batavia Daily News, there is the Genesee Sun in Livingston County and the aggregation site in Watertown. While he acknowledges the newspaper industry as a whole is struggling - part the reason he wanted to give online-only news a try - he also thinks small-town papers will survive.įor the Daily News, however, the launch of OrleansHub puts the Johnson family, owners of The Batavia Daily News, the Livingston County News and the Watertown Daily Times, in a unique position. In a way, Rivers is now competing with his former employer, but he is not about to say anything negative about the Daily News. Rivers thinks the Daily News does a better job than other news outlets of getting beyond the murders and the weird crimes, but there just wasn't enough news getting published about his home community, he said. ![]() "There's more that happens in Orleans County than just the bad stuff," Sawicz said. They both think existing media outlets weren't giving Orleans County the coverage it deserved. They have a mutual passion for Orleans County that brings them together as a publishing team. Sawicz chaffs at the idea of county governments giving out government contracts to non-local businesses and Rivers opposes tax subsidies for national retailers. Rivers said locally owned businesses in Orleans County have never had a bigger cheerleader than Sawicz. Sawicz's parents purchased the PennySaver in 1960 and she bought it from them in 1989. When I first came out here, there were two chambers (of commerce), Albion and Medina, and she was willing to be kind of the leader to bring those two together." She's also willing to do the heavy lifting. "In terms of the thankless job that no one wants, she goes and deals with the health department, gets all the stuff, cleans it up, puts it away. "One of the things I liked about her is she's in charge of the hot dog stand at the strawberry festival," Rivers said. They're both Rotary Club members and have known each other for years. The 38-year-old journalist, who is married with four children, said he couldn't have carried out the vision for OrleansHub without Sawicz's support. While Rivers is the editor, reporter, photographer and public face of OrleansHub, the PennySaver is supplying technical, advertising and back-office support and Sawicz is paying his salary until online advertising revenue can carry the site on its own. Karen Sawicz, owner of the Lake County PennySaver, is providing the resources necessary to get OrleansHub off the ground. Rivers has the passion, but he also has the financial backing many locally owned start-ups lack. (There are nearly 100 successful locally owned online community news sites in the nation, and perhaps without exception, all founded by out-of-work journalists who started their ventures as much out of necessity as passion). It's a big step and an unusual one, to go from a steady job at a daily newspaper to a locally owned, online-only news start-up. Rivers did it, in part, because, "it seemed like the county would benefit from having a locally owned, locally run news site." ![]() He quit to become an online news journalist in Orleans County. ![]() After 15 years at the Batavia Daily News, he quit. For 17 years, Tom Rivers soldiered on in small-town, print journalism, honing his craft writing about pinewood derbies, high-school graduations and new varieties of cucumbers.Īll that changed over the past 30 days.
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