Reprinted from The Washington Blade

The History Press released a book by D.C.-area journalist Charlie Clark in October entitled, “The Life and Times of the Falls Church News-Press” (a 192 page paperback).

The News-Press was founded in 1991 by journalist and gay activist Nicholas Benton and has published more than 1,700 consecutive weekly editions since serving the inside-the-beltway Northern Virginia suburb of the City of Falls Church, a mere seven miles from the White House.

In its masthead, the News-Press says of itself, “Since 1991, an award-winning LGBT-owned general interest community newspaper.” It has been named the Business of the Year twice and Benton the Person of the Year by the Falls Church City Council. These are selected excerpts from the Clark book:

“Its founder, Nicholas F. Benton, is a native Californian, college baseball player, degreed master of divinity, gay activist and journalist born “with printer’s ink in his veins” – or so he suspects. He launched the Falls Church News-Press largely as a one-man band. But with unflagging energy, he emerged as a major influencer and talent nurturer.

“Benton knows the key players, hosts frequent parties and can be see walking the streets and dining at eateries that make Falls Church homey. In editorials written every week by Benton himself, the editor strives to protect the city’s prize schools by pressing for property tax revenues and favoring development in the occasional battles with traditionalists who treasure the residential village. He made his mark on zoning disputes over how to tastefully attract commercial development. News-Press news sections combine small-town intimate coverage – plenty of photographs of smiling residents lined up for the camera – with exclusive accounts of action by the city council and the school board (at whose meetings Benton is sometimes the only person in attendance)…

“Some say it’s a miracle that Benton’s close-to-home news organ – backed neither by inherited wealth nor corporate investors – has survived three decades, given the current death knells for local news outlets…. The book you hold relays the tale of how Benton pulled things off. He takes virtually no vacations (beyond a few weekends). He pays staff writers (and offers health insurance) rather than engaging too many volunteers. He hires and mentors high school students. He gives the paper out for free and publishes letters that criticize. He donates to charities and cultivates youth readers by boosting high school and Little League sports, holiday parades, scouting and local history. His team covers charities, efforts to aid the homeless, published authors, theater productions, demands for low-income housing, struggling small businesses, gay rights and wars over parking. And Benton invites the public to his office parties..

‘The News-Press is one of the things that make Falls Church special,” Mayor Dave Tarter told me as this book was in preparation. The paper reinforces and enhances the sense of community of shared experiences in covering stories that the Washington Post would not make space for. “It is a labor of love for Nick Benton, and it shows. Whether you love it or hate it, everyone reads the News-Press…’

“…Benton enrolled at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley (class of 1969). This brought him to the University of California’s flagship school at the height of the antiwar, civil rights and student power protests, a time when the smell of the national guardsmen’s tear gas was familiar on campus. Benton was awarded his master of divinity diploma cum laude on June 13, 1969 (it is framed and displayed today in the News-Press office. He worked as a youth minister for three years at seminary but never pursued that as a career. He would later consider his newspaper ownership a close substitute to ministry…

“Benton remained in the Bay Area and worked for the famous alternative weekly, the Berkeley Barb, enjoying the freedom to publish on counterculture subjects from women’s liberation to rock music…While at the Barb Benton also came out as gay, just before the 1969 Stonewall Riot in New York’s Greenwich Village that launched the gay rights movement. His articles, he later wrote, “promoted the notion that fully actualized, gay liberation had the potential to be socially transformative.” He penned the editorial for the first edition of the Gay Sunshine newspaper, and he coproduced a pair of issues of his own fledgling gay newspaper, the Effeminist…

“… By 1987, he had incorporated his own news service…It became the context for his decision in early December 1990 to launch the News-Press. He would pull it off by charming volunteer labor and combining it with his own seven-days-a-week style. Another secret to Benton’s success: he is “frugal.” There were no desks in the office, just boards and folding chairs. ‘Editor in Chief Nick Benton is too modest to blow his own horn,’ wrote reader Robert O. Beach in a letter published in March 1998. ‘But he deserves tremendous credit for the vital contribution the News-Press makes to our community.”

“Environmental consultant and history activist Dave Eckert goes further. ‘The News-Press became the focal point of Falls Church,’ he said in 2022. ‘Nick Benton wanted to do good journalism, get readers and advertisements, but in many ways the paper brought the city together. And in many ways it drove it apart.’

“… ‘We worked all night on that first issue,’ Benton recalled, ‘and as the deadline approached, as dawn began to break on March 27, we looked out our second-story windows to see that the cherry blossom trees on North Virginia Avenue had blossomed overnight. That was our sign to press ahead.’

“After the proverbial all-nighter, his team of three drove to Gaithersburg, Md., to the Comprint Co. plant to witness the maiden print run. ‘When the press bell rang and everything started to move, it was a very special moment,’ Benton remembered. ‘As the papers started chugging onto a conveyor belt, I couldn’t help but stand on a box and loudly exclaim, Let every tyrant tremble! The noise of the press drowned me out so that only a couple of pressmen gave me funny looks.’

“Back in Falls Church, young O’Brien had walked the streets crowing, ‘Have you heard the news? Come March 28, Falls Church is going to have its own newspaper!’”