Journalist Dan Murphy has been covering Yonkers for more than two decades. He’s watched newspapers collapse, reporters vanish, and the city’s media landscape shrink to what he calls “a desert.”
“There’s a desperate need for journalists today,” Murphy says. “It’s a desert we’re living in. We’re working in a desert, and we have to try to survive.”
Murphy is editor-in-chief of Yonkers Rising and Westchester Rising, two weeklies that trace their roots to the 1950s-era Home News & Times. They’re among the last print publications still covering city government, police, schools, and local politics on a regular basis.
It’s a far cry from what Yonkers once had. When the daily Herald Statesman newspaper merged with other Gannett papers in 1998 to form the regional Journal News, the city lost its dedicated daily. What remains is a patchwork of weekly papers, social media pages, and bloggers.
What’s Left?
Murphy sees a landscape littered with gaps.
“News 12 took some big hits, some big budget cuts, so they don’t do what they used to do,” he says. Since Altice USA acquired Cablevision in 2016, News 12 has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs — up to 40 staffers let go in a single day in 2023. The Journal News has been “cut to the bone.” It stopped printing a Saturday edition in March 2022.
Asked who is legitimately covering Yonkers today, Murphy names two outlets: the Yonkers Ledger and Yonkers Voice.
“I think the Ledger does a good job,” he says. “They’re a legitimate news source. There’s not many of them out there.”
He’s critical of what fills the void: bloggers “copying and pasting” press releases, social media accounts “in search of that negative, nasty story,” residents who rely solely on official government channels.
“No, you can’t just read what the mayor and his administration are putting out,” Murphy says. “You have to do your own research and your own homework. Read all of the above — the Daily Voice, the Yonkers Voice, the Ledger, my stuff, LoHud, News 12, read anonymous posts by people, read it all.”
The Citizen Journalists
One outlet on Murphy’s list — Yonkers Voice — is run by another Yonkers journalist stalwart, Rui S. Benros Sr., known online as Ru Ros. A Yonkers resident since 1978, Ros began using the Yonkers Voice name in 2005 and ramped up regular publishing in 2017. The Voice has developed a major presence, with various strands on Facebook and Instagram. His method: show up, turn on the camera, let viewers decide.
“We do not make the news,” his website declares. “We react to it.”
No editing, no narrative framing — just raw footage. The Facebook public group has 32.9K members, and on YonkersVoice.com, an archive of more than 235 pages of video attests to the years of covering breaking news, community events, and local interviews.
Ros himself doesn’t give interviews.
“I’m not really into being interviewed,” he says by phone. “I interview people. I’ve never been interviewed.”
According to a 2021 GoFundMe, he finances the operation himself, purchasing equipment with personal money. The fundraiser sought to help him after he contracted COVID-19 while covering a story.
Inside Yonkers
Anderson Fland runs another social media outlet. He founded Inside Yonkers more than seven years ago and runs Second Alarm Media, a company he says provides breaking news content to local TV stations. His Facebook page has 34K followers, plus community groups where residents post their own concerns.
“I was raised in Yonkers,” Fland says. “We decided to make something that was unbiased and very cut-throat and forward.”
Asked if he agrees with Murphy’s “desert” assessment, Fland didn’t hesitate.
“I do. I highly do,” he says. “There’s not an actual place where people can go to actually listen and hear and know what’s actually going on without it being one-sided.”
Fland and Ros know each other. “I’m good friends with him,” Fland says. “We’re competitors, throw little bones at each other, but we’re really good. He’s on my speed dial.”
Beyond them, the landscape gets murkier. Yonkers Daily Voice, part of a regional hyperlocal network, did not respond to interview requests. Other voices operate on the margins: citizen bloggers filming the streets, political podcasters streaming commentary, automated feeds aggregating content from elsewhere. A few produce original reporting. Most do not.
The Stories Nobody Tells
The Yonkers City Council is “under covered,” Murphy says. Routine votes on contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars pass without scrutiny.
He pointed to stories that deserve attention but rarely get it. In January, a jury awarded $8 million to a driver struck by a City of Yonkers DPW truck while sitting in a parked car on Ashburton Avenue. The city had offered $35,000 before trial.
Positive developments go unnoticed too. Murphy noted that dozens of city parks have been renovated in recent years — a story he believes hasn’t been adequately told.
Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy has started sending email summaries of council decisions — an acknowledgment, perhaps, that traditional coverage can no longer be counted on.
Fland put it simply: what residents still aren’t getting is “accurate information, up-to-date information, and a little more clarity and transparency.”
Social media helps fill part of that gap with raw, unfiltered footage. But livestreaming a fire is not the same as investigating why a building’s sprinkler system failed. Attending a council meeting is not the same as tracking how a councilmember voted over the past year.
The people stepping in are doing what they can with what they have.
Why Keep Going?
Murphy has no plans to stop. He credits the community with keeping him motivated.
“I got people picking up 10, 20 copies, taking them back to their apartment building, leaving it in the lobby,” he says. “There’s a real camaraderie with this, and that helps me keep going.”
Ros keeps it simple: “Persistence, Focus, Determination, Hard work. And be prepared to accept criticism without letting it get under your skin.”
Fland’s advice: “Don’t let local politics influence your career in media.”
Murphy tells young journalists to focus on what matters to them.
“Write what you love, write what you know,” he says. “Because then that type of story, it shows in your results. People need to learn unvarnished, unbiased, truthful stories.”
All three are still at it — showing up, turning on the cameras, filing stories in a desert where few others remain.
See accompanying article for our reporter’s personal take on Yonkers news media.
