Veteran journalist leaves regional community daily to start online news outlet in his N.Y. county

A community newspaper journalist in western New York is going digital. After 17 years at small-town papers, the last 15 at the Batavia Daily News, Tom Rivers has started an online publication called OrleansHub.com to serve Orleans County, population 42,000, on Lake Ontario west of Rochester, Howard Owens reports for The Batavian, an online publication in the county that borders Orleans on the south. (Owens photo: Rivers and financial backer Karen Sawicz)

Rivers will be competing with The Journal-Register, a Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. paper in Medina that was a daily until recently and now prints three times a week, and the Daily News, a Johnson Newspapers publication in Genesee County that covers and circulates in Orleans County and in Wyoming County, to the south.

OrleansHub has financial backing from Karen Sawicz, owner of the Lake Country PennySaver. Rivers will be the editor, reporter and photographer, the PennySaver will supply technical, advertising and back-office support, and Sawicz will pay Rivers' salary until online advertising revenue can carry the site on its own.

Rivers hopes to reach out to younger readers, Owens writes. "They're not newspaper readers," Rivers told him. "They might realize they can get plugged into the community with the history society or youth baseball. As you show them more of the community, they will see more ways to get plugged in, and I think that's what we need to be a viable, vibrant community." (Read more)