The Bolinas Hearsay News

In the secluded and salty hippy community of Bolinas in Northern California, Michael Rafferty, a small-town butcher decided to share the gossip that passed through his shop. Rafferty created a “newspaper” with an usual approach – it accepted open submissions from news and art to gossip and poetry, making everyone in the town a reporter. In a way, the Bolinas Hearsay News was Facebook before there was Facebook.

Though local newspapers in the area have folded over time, The Hearsay News is now celebrating it’s 50-year anniversary. Hearsay News editor, Will Bartlett appreciates having the Bolinas history recorded through the eyes of the residents. Along with the newsroom walls cluttered with years of keepsakes, illustrations and advertisements, there are archived copies of each Hearsay edition going back five decades.

 For Bartlett, these archives put some perspective on recent arguments and modern drama in the community. “What's hilarious is you can pull out, like any one of those archives and find the exact same issues that people were fighting about twenty or thirty years ago. The same shit over and over and over again. And I love that. I love, that it's not there's nothing new… and it's the same old challenges that any community, will face,” said Barlett.

 Despite recent threats to the Hearsay News with new apps like Nextdoor, the paper is still read widely throughout the town. “We sell out all the time,” said Ab Nasra, owner of the local bodega, “They (locals) don’t care about the Chronicle, they want their Hearsay.”

 With a new generation in charge of the triweekly printing, the Hearsay may survive another 50 years.