Bragging on my sister

Who's now deputy publisher of Straus News

Rolling with my sister, circa 1983

Published at Counterpunch

Between the two of us, my sister Becca Tucker and I have won dozens of journalism awards. (No, I haven’t won any.) Now, in addition to being a reporter, Bec has been promoted to deputy publisher of Straus News, making her the fourth generation of our family to help steer the company, which publishes 14 weekly newspapers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Our aunt, Jeanne Straus, is publisher.

On top of these responsibilities, Bec remains editor and publisher of Dirt, a green living magazine, where she writes a wonderful column.

So, I’m a proud brother. And an apprehensive one.

The newspaper business isn’t the same as it was a generation ago, when me, Bec and our brother David would huddle in the Patent Trader’s conference room on snow days, watching Rambo and other VHS video rentals from the nearby pharmacy. Post-movie, we might scamper over to bug Jerry in production — who used an exacto knife to manually jigsaw into place the newspaper’s stories and ads (many of which mom sold) — or Joe Lombardi in sports, who deserves a Pulitzer for somehow getting work done as I peppered him with questions.

We had the run of the place because our parents owned the Patent Trader, a local newspaper started by our dad’s dad, which covered northern Westchester County, New York.

Even back then, the days of easy profitability for community newspapers were starting to wane, and we felt this keenly at home, where the financial pressure contributed to our parents’ endless fighting. Not long after dad fired mom (yep, that happened), he sold the paper in 1999 to the Gannett newspaper chain, which kept the publication going another eight years before shuttering it.

Mind you, these were the good years, before the evil trifecta of Google, Facebook and Amazon captured the ad revenue that underpinned generations of community newspapers.

How Amazon Kills Local News

Of these three evil companies, Amazon is given a comparative pass for its role in destroying the free press. The company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is even hailed as a media savior for having bought the Washington Post (which he is terrible at overseeing).

While Amazon may hoover up a smaller (but growing) portion of ad revenue than Google and Facebook, its ruthless (and possibly illegal) business practices have left countless Main Streets without their local toy store, clothing store, book store, etc. Thanks to Amazon, it’s not just stores’ ad dollars being lost, but the actual stores themselves. This destabilizes fragile local economies, and the newspapers that depend on them.

If current trends continue, by the end of the year the US will have lost fully one-third of its newspapers in a span of just two decades. That’s according to a depressing 2023 report by Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative, which notes that over this same timeframe the US has lost nearly two-thirds of journalism jobs, a staggering 43,000 reporters. We could fill an entire stadium with nothing but out-of-work reporters.

The fallout from this isn’t contained to the newspaper industry. As papers shutter, “people know less and less about what their local government officials are doing” and “voter participation in local and state elections declines, corruption in both government and business increases, and local residents end up paying more in taxes and at checkout,” the bleak report states.

As Google, Facebook and Amazon abscond with the bounty that once sustained local papers, left behind are communities suffering from increased polarization and vitriol. “The decline of the news media has been paralleled by the fracturing of American society,” reports the New York Times. “As the media fell, the noise level rose.”

That noise hasn’t spared Bec. The attacks began after her 2021 exposé of a local undersheriff’s past ties to the right-wing militia group Oath Keepers. The next year, Bec followed up on that story (which won her an award) by revealing that the undersheriff’s political opponent had a similar background.

For these and other sins, Bec and Jeanne were targeted in a manner unlike anything our family had experienced before. To cut the tension during this time, I joked with Bec that the smears — accusing her of being a far-left radical, among other things — were true, they just got the wrong sibling.

Bec is none of those things. She’s just an outstanding journalist. And now she’s deputy publisher. And soon, on her shoulders will fall the near-impossible task of keeping afloat a string of local newspapers, amid a business landscape that seems designed to make them fail. If anyone can do it, she can.

One more thing about my sister: she’s such a great writer she can even make a press release sparkle, like the one below on her promotion.

Bec with our aunt, Jeanne Straus, publisher of Straus News

Tucker named deputy publisher of Straus News

Family leadership of the company continues.

Journalist Rebecca E. Tucker, 42, was named deputy publisher of Straus News on July 1. She is the niece of the current publisher and the 4th generation family member to help steer a Straus media company.

In the wearing-of-many-hats tradition of independently owned news organizations, Tucker will also continue in her role as editor and publisher of Dirt magazine, as well as reporting for the company’s nine [non-New York City] newspapers.

“We’re thrilled that the family tradition at Straus News continues to another generation and know Becca’s immense talents will help lead us in the future,” said Jeanne Straus, president and publisher of Straus News.

“Local news is in my blood – on every side,” said Tucker, who grew up in and out of the newsroom in Westchester County, N.Y., where her parents ran the local paper. Tucker has worked at Straus News since 2008.

Tucker is the great-granddaughter of Nathan Straus, who purchased WMCA Radio in 1943. Her grandfather, Peter Straus, was director of the Voice of America and ran WMCA Radio for 40 years, eventually augmenting his radio stations with weekly newspapers. The late Diane Straus, Tucker’s mother, worked as an editor of the Village Voice and New York Magazine, ran the Patent Trader with Tucker’s father and later served as publisher of the American Prospect and Washington Monthly. Her father, Carll Tucker, was publisher of the Patent Trader and later founded the hyper-local news company the Daily Voice.

After studying English at Yale, Tucker worked as a reporter for the New York Sun, the New York Press and Manhattan Media where she covered various beats: the police desk, education, the waterfront, often jumping on her bike to get to an accident scene before the dust had settled. In 2006 she helped launch New York Family and became its managing editor.

Tucker’s reporting has garnered dozens of awards. She won the prestigious National Education Writers Association Award, and recently won six first place awards in the National Newspaper Association’s 2022 Better Newspaper Contest.

Tucker launched Dirt, a green living magazine covering New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and took it nonprofit in 2023.

Tucker lives with her husband, Joe Gara, and their three children in northeast Pennsylvania, where they grow much of their own food and keep chickens, turkeys and ducks.

An ultimate Frisbee player since college, Tucker played on the first professional women’s team in New York and these days competes with her Hudson Valley-based club team.