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The Voice — A Distinctive Treasure
By Claire Nader, Winsted
It was with a deep sense of loss that I learned that this week would see the last issue of The Voice. It was always a pleasure to tell friends and colleagues across the country of this marvelous, free reader-written newspaper, which first appeared on April 15, 1992. Across the board their reaction was "what a wonderful idea!" My sister, Laura, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, uses the letters of The Voice in her class on Controlling Processes, to the benefit of her students.
For many years The Winsted Voice, then simply The Voice as people in neighboring towns clamored for a place to express their own voices, has been part of our small-town life. It is not surprising that such a venture found a receptive soil in the Northwest Corner. After all, this is New England, where the town meeting is a familiar form of government and direct democracy is its hallmark.
Because of The Voice, citizens could know what their neighbors had on their minds, read responses to expressed views and contribute their own voice and views. In this unique forum, assent and dissent had equal space. In short, what the Northwest Corner towns are losing is a treasure. At a time of unprecedented media concentration and as our publicly owned airwaves are being hijacked by corporate titans, this is a special loss.
When the innovative Jedd Gould, then a reporter for a local newspaper, emerged as the creator, publisher and editor of The Winsted Voice, he based his plan on complaints he had heard as a reporter, that people felt they could not get their voices heard. Letters to the editor certainly weren't enough; letter space was downsized by local newspapers as they were fast being gobbled up by larger and larger entities.
The appearance of The Voice was well-timed. The decade of the '90s saw many town issues which engaged the energies of people, perhaps the most controversial of which was the proposed closing of the Winsted Memorial Hospital. The Voice provided an essential forum for the thousands of residents who fought to keep their century-old hospital open. They spoke their piece in a democratic marketplace of ideas and information, and it was printed in full.
The policy of The Voice was that submissions were published with minimal editing, and no article was rejected due to its point of view. This welcoming policy attracted many people, including my brother Ralph Nader, who regularly contributed his nationally syndicated column, which was rejected for political reasons by the out-of-town owner of the Register-Citizen.
Thank you, Jedd Gould, and your dedicated staff for an exhilarating run of eleven years. We are sorry that a dire economic picture is forcing the closing of The Voice. You have been a gracious and generous supporter of undiluted citizen self-expression, which is an essential feature of any polity that claims to be a democracy. For this we applaud you.
What do we citizens do now? How do we reach each other? The big boys are not interested in local, spirited dialogue.
P.S. — The news about The Voice reached Ralph on the road. Here is what he said:
"A great journalistic innovation that gave free voice to the opinion of citizens is unique in the nation. There is no other reader-written weekly newspaper in America. I hope a way will be found to save or revive it." —Ralph Nader
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