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The Anderson Valley Advertiser has attracted a cult following by collapsing the walls between neighborhood news and outsider fascination, writer and commenter, and sometimes, fact and fiction.
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The Anderson Valley Advertiser has attracted a cult following by collapsing the walls between neighborhood news and outsider fascination, writer and commenter, and sometimes, fact and fiction.

Columbia Journalism Review·Lucy Schiller·19 days ago
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Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter . Trust in the press is at an all-time low, misinformation abounds, and the ecosystem for local news is shattering. None of this seems to faze the Anderson Valley Advertiser —from Mendocino County, a part of Northern California known to visitors for its ancient redwoods, marijuana cultivation, and fog—which has greeted these realities over every fence: between neighborhood news and outsider fascination, writer and commenter, and, occasionally, fact and fiction. One motto of the AVA, as it’s known, is that it’s “America’s last newspaper.” It was started in 1952 by a man named Eugene Jamison, who learned the basics of printing at the Sherman Indian Institute for Orphans and aimed to attract local ads by cultivating relationships with a broad swath. Bruce Anderson, who bought the paper in 1984, took the opposite approach. As he put it, “I unified the community, against me.” Under Anderson’s direction, the AVA has covered trials, weather, schools, and valley people.…

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