Honestly, the local news business in New York is a bit of a mess right now. You’ve got hedge funds buying up small-town papers, gutting the staff, and leaving behind "ghost newsrooms" that barely know the name of the mayor. But then there’s the Rome Daily Sentinel news operation. It's a weird, beautiful outlier.
While most local rags are fading into digital obscurity, the Sentinel is still kicking in Oneida County. It’s been family-owned since 1864. Think about that for a second. That’s the end of the Civil War. While the rest of the media world is obsessed with "pivoting to video" or whatever the latest buzzword is, the Waters family has just kept printing the news in Rome, New York.
It’s not just a relic, though. It’s actually growing in weird ways.
The Local News Monopoly Nobody Saw Coming
A few years ago, the paper did something gutsy. They rebranded as just the Daily Sentinel and started moving into Utica and Herkimer. Usually, the big city paper eats the little town paper. Here, the opposite happened. The Utica Observer-Dispatch—owned by Gannett—started shrinking, and the Sentinel smelled blood.
They opened a Utica office in 2022. Suddenly, the Utica Common Council and local school boards started voting to make the Sentinel their "official newspaper" for legal notices. That might sound like boring administrative stuff, but in the news world, that’s where the money is. It’s a huge vote of confidence from the community.
You see, people in Central New York are tired of "regional" news that feels like it was written by a robot in a different time zone. They want to know why the road is closed on Black River Blvd or what happened at the last Rome City School District meeting. The Rome Daily Sentinel news team actually shows up to those things.
Why ownership matters so much
If a giant corporation owns your local paper, they care about the stock price. If the Waters family owns it, they care about the fact that they have to see you at the grocery store. Bradley Waters, the current publisher, has been pretty open about the struggles. He admitted back in 2022 that the paper hadn't turned a profit in four years.
Instead of folding, they changed the game:
- They switched from carrier delivery to the US Postal Service to save on distribution.
- They expanded their footprint to cover three counties (Oneida, Herkimer, and Madison).
- They leaned into digital but kept the print product alive for the folks who still want to hold a paper with their morning coffee.
It’s a scrappy way to survive. But it works because the trust is already there.
More Than Just a Police Blotter
If you think a small-town paper is just obituaries and high school football, you haven't been paying attention. The Sentinel has a history of punching way above its weight class.
Remember Griffiss Air Force Base? When it was an active B-52 base with nuclear weapons, the Sentinel was the primary watchdog. When the base closed in 1994, it could have been the death of the city. The paper didn't just report on the closure; they documented the entire "re-imagining" of the base into the business park and drone research hub it is today.
The Dick Clark Connection
Here's a fun bit of trivia for your next bar night: Dick Clark—yes, that Dick Clark—got his start at WRUN, a radio station founded by the Rome Sentinel Company. He was an announcer there before he ever hit the big time. The paper has always been a bit of a talent incubator for Central New York.
Today, that same energy goes into things like their podcasts and sports coverage. They cover Syracuse University sports, sure, but they treat a Rome Free Academy game with the same level of intensity. That’s something a national news site just can’t replicate.
Dealing With the "News Desert" Crisis
We talk a lot about news deserts in America—places where there is zero local reporting. Rome isn't one of them, but it easily could have been. The shift to the Daily Sentinel brand was a survival tactic that actually helped the surrounding areas.
When they acquired the Boonville Herald and started distributing the Clinton Record, they basically created a mini-media empire that keeps local governments in check. Without a reporter in the room, local taxes go up, corruption goes unnoticed, and community stories just... vanish.
Honestly, it’s kinda impressive they’ve kept it going without a massive paywall that blocks everything. They have a digital subscription, yeah, but they also realize that in a town like Rome, the information needs to get out.
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What You Should Actually Do
If you live in Central New York or just care about the survival of independent journalism, there are actual steps you can take. Don't just "hope" local news survives.
Check the archives. If you're into genealogy, the Sentinel archives are a gold mine. Sites like OldNews.com have scans going back to the 1800s. You can find out what your great-great-grandfather was doing in Rome in 1890.
Subscribe to the digital edition. It’s usually cheaper than a latte and it keeps a reporter's boots on the ground. If you're in the Utica-Rome area, this is the most direct way to ensure the Observer-Dispatch isn't your only source of (often delayed) info.
Engage with the community sections. The Sentinel still runs "Letters to the Editor." In an age of toxic Twitter threads, there’s something weirdly refreshing about reading a well-reasoned letter from a neighbor about a new zoning law or a local park renovation.
Support the "Sister" papers. If you're up in the North Country, the Boonville Herald is part of this same family tree. Supporting one helps the whole ecosystem.
Local news isn't dead; it’s just changing. The Rome Daily Sentinel news model shows that if you stay local enough and stay family-owned, you can actually survive the collapse of the traditional media world. It's about being a neighbor, not just a news outlet.