Ashford Falls Falls Newspaper

The **Ashford Falls Falls Newspaper** is a local American newspaper in Ashford Falls, New York serving Warren County. It is offered locally and by subscription to subscribers outside the county.

The exact origins of the newspaper are unknown. It is believed it might have started as the Warren County Pamphlet distributed by the local church elders at the Ashford Falls Presbyterian Church, who ran the original town charter. In the 1870s, it was taken over by the local postmaster and distributed as the Warren County Gazette, but it wasn't until the 1890s when it was formerly purchased and developed into a public newspaper by Frederick Loren Sr., the grandfather of Frederick Loren III, a wealthy newspaper magnate from New York City. At this point, it became the Ashford Falls Newspaper, later the Ashford Falls Falls due to a problem in the printing process.

Originally based in the space over the Ashford Falls Drugstore, the newspaper subsequently moved into the Old Kettering Apartment House on Donahue Street, once the Old Donahue Apartment House. The newspaper's printing machines are in the former meat packing plant on Commerce Street. In 1986, Nate Featherstone purchased shares in the paper and acquired the meat-packing plant from Carter Hedison, who had been renting the location to the newspaper. Featherstone afterward donated the building to the newspaper, allowing it to transform the top floors into the local WTEN News affiliate run by William Coleman with the newspaper writers and news reporters doubling as newscasters.

Through the Eighties and Nineties, the newspaper's televised news crew has been both famous and notorious for on-air mistakes and odd behavior, fights between reporters and technical problems in the studio. Quentin Baldwin, the main newscaster, has called the job as being both a "straight man and a traffic cop." Diana Freeling, the original reporter, was a source of infatuation from all the local teenage boys, getting over a thousand fan letters a day. After her departure, her position was the source of rivalry between Deborah Nordoff and Melissa Strickland who were caught fighting on live television on a few occaisions. Of the other on-air talent, Ozzie Graham has become extremely excited on camera while reporting on sports games, and Chris Bundy has drifted into long pointless stories from his life as it pertains to the weather. Vernon Potts, the newspaper editor, oversees the operations of the newspaper and the studio. In the 90s, a high school student named Mandy Booth had conned her way into a broadcast job at the studios.

Over the years, Potts has run several articles on the corruption of the Hedison Family in the area, earning him the ire of the Hedisons. Other articles have covered the engagement of Blake Hedison and Caitlin Featherstone, the murders of Monica Hedison and Phillip Martin, the heavy winter of 1988, Len Snedeker outing himself publicly as a cross-dresser, reports of public mischief by Russell Coleman, Carter Hedison's coma, Bud Mason's sexual assault spree, the 1991 election between Carl Griggs and Sabrina Collins, the appearance of Jack Gates, the arrival of the Children of the Sun, the arson at Helen Caldwell's house and Carter Hedison's murder trial. In recent years, Potts has blocked several stories from Melissa Strickland about local urban legends and reputed paranormal activity occurring in the county.