In the area near Pawtuckaway, a nonprofit organization is carrying on the New Hampshire tradition of reporting local news.
I'm Deborah Schachter from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and this is Giving Matters.
There was a time when every village in New Hampshire had a local broadsheet, relentlessly local news dished up by local voices.
In one region of New Hampshire, a nonprofit organization has taken on that role of reporting the local news, and has taken it online.
Bob Strobel of Northwood is an editor of The Forum, a website dedicated to local news.
"I moved to town, and for three or four months I didn't know where to vote, I couldn't find any town services... there was just this lack of a public source for information that anybody could get to."
The Forum has become that source for local news.
"Births, deaths, new books at the library, all that kind of stuff we publish. And people read it."
During the flooding in 2007, the Forum kept Deerfield residents connected, even as roads were washed out and phone lines went down.
Andrew Robertson is a Deerfield selectman.
"So essentially we had a community that was facing one of the largest natural disasters it's seen in the last century. Without phone service, you couldn't dial 911."
But the internet stayed up, so the Forum stayed online.
Robertson: "The two ways to get information quickly became the town website, which suffered a little bit of difficulty early on in the flood, and the Forum. And the Forum provided immediate emergency information."
And having a local news source has encouraged community in local affairs.
Robertson: "I think we also benefit greatly from just dissemination of the information."
Nonprofits strengthen New Hampshire communities in some surprising ways.
For more information about this nonprofit, other nonprofits in your area, and about this series, go to the Giving Matters page at NHPR.org.
Giving Matters is a coproduction of New Hampshire Public Radio and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.
