The View From Prospect Hill for the week of Nov. 22

Most local newspapers today are owned by large, publicly traded corporations. In this very city, there is a news organ belonging to a corporation located 1,005 miles away in Illinois.
  The Somerville News is not one of these papers. The strengths, weaknesses, triumphs and failures of the paper take place solely in the community it covers. The News has been locally owned for 5 decades and the publishers are themselves members of the community — an undeniable benefit to a local paper.

  But being local cuts both ways. Local owners bring the burden of their business, personal and social entanglements. Walter Annenberg, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, famously refused to allow his papers to mention the names of those who had offended him —– including Ralph Nader, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Sonny Liston, and for a time, the entire Philadelphia Phillies baseball team.
  In this city of 80,000 people bound by 4.2 square miles of land, such entanglements and vendettas could quickly form a noose. But perhaps the greatest single argument that the Somerville News does not entrap itself in such entanglements can be found on its Web site, www.thesomervillenews.com.
In this strange world of Somerville cyberspace, all opinions are accepted and published without interference, subservient to no clique and designed solely for the upbuilding of Somerville.
  The comments of thesomervillenews.com have quickly become the leading source for local satire and political commentary in the community. While Speak Out is limited to phone messages from a small group of people who have had too much too drink, the comments of the somervillenews.com are alternately uproariously funny and thought provoking. Consider this missive from the fictitious world of the ‚ÄúCambriville News:‚Äù
 

“A reminder to all residents that today is the Annual Clean Up Day here in Cambriville. This is the annual get together for all residents to assist the City to clean up all the crap the DPW just could not find the time to get to. It also doubles as the annual get together for old timers and hacks to mingle freely with newcomers and tree huggers in a common goal. To size up each other in anticipation of next years municipal elections.
  And in business matters, The Galluccio School of Driving in Cambriville has closed its doors until further notice. Cambriville News could not reach the owners or their attorneys for comment.‚Äù
 

  Or consider this commentary on Somerville development and the concept of smart growth:
 

  ‚ÄúSomerville’s urban planning has failed miserably in providing affordable housing. As a rule, more dense areas cost more to build in, tend to have higher taxes, higher levels of pollution, and a higher cost of living. Families no longer able to afford single-family homes in Somerville have to move into multifamily units
  The aggressive promotion of smart growth policies and a gross misrepresentation of the facts is allowing us to steal the affordability of Somerville in the name of progress and big profits for some people. You did it to the American Indians and now you are doing it to the poor of Somerville.  Although smart growth proponents advocate land-use control as a means of providing affordable housing, it can punish low-income families, keeping them from ever being able to afford a home of their own and denying them the American Dream when these concepts fall into the hands of certain powers that be.‚Äù
 

  A newspaper is the conscience of a community and in its print and online versions, the Somerville News is creating a permanent social history of Somerville with the words of the residents who lived it.