When I was growing up in Peachtree City in the mid-1970s, there was one newspaper in our community, This Week in Peachtree City. The paper was owned and published by Jimmy Booth for whose father Booth Middle School was named.

The paper came out on Wednesdays only and it wasn’t thrown in your driveway for free. People actually had subscriptions to the paper or bought it at the grocery store.

Back then there wasn’t a lot of news to report; crime was non-existent and there were few life-altering stories in Fayette County, so most of the paper was devoted to new businesses opening up, school happenings, and other community activities.

I remember one weekly column written by an elderly lady, I think her name was Louise, and she would report on who was having a birthday or a baby, who was on vacation and where, any big parties from the previous week, who was in or out of the hospital, who was sick and who was recovering, and who got a new pet. Since most of us knew each other by name, it was pretty interesting stuff to read.

You have to remember that the 1970 Census of Peachtree city recorded only 794 people (up to 6,400 in 1980) and Fayetteville only had 1,300 folks in 1970 (up to 2,600 by 1980). Jimmy did a really good job of running the newspaper for us back then, and you could be sure that if anything did happen, you would be completely caught up on it with the Wednesday edition.

Things have changed drastically since then for both Peachtree City and Fayette County. Believe it or not, Peachtree City is now the 16th largest city in the state, ahead of Dalton, Gainesville, Newnan, and Norcross with an estimated 2004 population of 33,800 (Fayetteville’s estimated 2004 population is 13,800, 49th in the state). Fayette County is the 20th largest county in the state out of 159 as of 2004 estimates, with a population of just over 100,000.

This Week was eventually sold and went quickly down the tube. I am not sure if it is even being published anymore, and even if it is, the last issue I saw a while back didn’t have enough print, even with advertisements, to line the bottom of a birdcage.

There was also at one point a Fayette County News many years ago which was a subscription-only newspaper, but I haven’t seen it in ages.

For most of the 1980s the county was really lacking in having any real solid source for local coverage. The Fayette Neighbor seemed to pick up some of that slack in the 1990s and did a pretty good job with it.

More recently The Atlanta-Journal created the Thursday Fayette/Coweta section and it does a decent job of providing a capsulation of the week’s news in the county, albeit brief.

But, until recently, I have never felt like the local newspaper situation had kept up with our growing population.

If you are like me, you probably depend on getting your local news through the free papers found at the end of your driveway (or in your bushes) towards the end of the week. Like most people, I am usually provided the The Fayette Neighbor and The Citizen, and, if it hasn’t rained before I pick them up (wish they would double-bag them like the AJC does on rainy days), I get a chance to get caught up on what is going on in Peachtree City and Fayette County.

I like and appreciate the free newspapers I get, but I understand why many don’t. People who don’t want to read them have to pick them up and trash them, and if you are on vacation or the house is empty and being sold, these things end up in the road and everywhere and make an unsightly mess.

I do wish these papers would go on a subscription-basis only. They might be surprised how many people, me included, would pay to get a local paper if they weren’t getting it for free and how the communities served by these papers would be more aesthetically pleasing without all these 2-week-old soggy newspapers all over the streets. But I digress.

I have to say that of the two real newspapers in the county, The Citizen has increasingly become the leader as our local news provider.

Over the past year and a half, I have seen them bring the intensity, accuracy, and reach of their coverage to a whole new level, a level deserving of the citizens of Fayette County and one a long time coming.

They give us real news which is timely and on topic with an excellent Web site to boot. I am not sure what has happened with the The Fayette Neighbor, but it no longer has any substance.

For instance, if you look at last week’s news, the main headline for the Neighbor (published once a week) on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006, was about Mickey Harp rotating his crops at Harp’s Farm to stay competitive.

Excuse me? It was an interesting story, but certainly not the most important thing going on in the county during the week.

The other front-page stories for the paper were about the parents arrested for illegally sending their kids to Fayette County Schools (newsworthy) and how Janet Dunn’s creative side coming out has affected the quality of her clay pots.

Wow, that about sums up the top stories in Fayette this week, don’t you think?

Inside the Neighbor, it doesn’t get any better. There is an article about the Fayette County High School bands getting together for a performance, a charity auction at The Fred, three full pages of advertisements, and a few editorials from nationally syndicated writers (at least they are mostly Republican), and that’s it — that’s the news of Fayette County for the week as reported by The Neighbor.

The second section, “People and Sports” (where most of the main sections articles should have been), gives us just over two pages of “news” followed by a classified section that covers all of Atlanta. Amazing.

On the other hand, the front page of Sept. 21 edition of The Citizen had the following newsworthy and important articles: “Robbery victim saves attacker from suicide,” “Demoted deputy has familiar foe as lawyer,” “Congressman: ‘Close the plant (about the North Fayette County waste treatment plant that has caused illnesses)’,” “School lines to be redrawn by the end of the year,” “Tests pinpoint PSC plant as source of illness,” “PTC Council to crack down on lakes’ buffer violations,” and finally, “Hospital to get traffic light in next two months.”

How can The Fayette Neighbor miss these stories completely and call itself a newspaper for our county? Inside The Citizen’s main section you will find the Police Blotter, an article about a teen indicted for a shooting death, information on an arson investigation, local editorials and letters to the editor, the always controversial but entertaining “Free Speech,” and much more.

The paper also includes the “Names and Faces” section which has six full pages of community interest information and two pages of local sports and the never dull “Dining Guide” with coverage of local restaurants and some decent recipes.

To insure that the paper keeps in touch with the roots of the community, you have articles by Sallie Satterthwaite, a resident of the county since the early 1970s. Great job.

For once, and I admit this is only recently, Fayette County has a viable newspaper again, in The Citizen.

I am not an advertiser in the paper and do not know anyone personally who works for The Citizen, but I can honestly say that for the first time in 30 years, since the days of Jimmy Booth and This Week, we now have a truly local newspaper that covers everything we need to know in our community.

I just hope they keep it up and maybe double-bag their papers when it rains. (All statistical information from U.S. Census Bureau — www.census.gov.)

Mike LaTella
Peachtree City, Ga.

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