Barrington Town News was founded by Patrick R. McElhiney, who has been a Barrington NH resident since 2007, on August 11th, 2019 after he realized that Barrington NH didn’t have a local newspaper. Since Barrington NH is so small, the purpose of the newspaper will be to connect the community together through information sharing in one convenient place that anyone can access free of charge. The business will pay its web-related costs by selling advertisements, and if the revenues are substantial enough, the company may pay professional writers to author articles and stories for the newspaper. For now, the newspaper will be populated with whatever news is provided to it by the organizations in Barrington NH, such as the Town of Barrington, the Greater Barrington Chamber of Commerce, the Barrington Public Library, the Barrington Police Department, and the Barrington Fire Department, among others.
McElhiney has experience developing local news websites, as he worked on one in Turlock, CA where he grew up and that city has nearly doubled in population since. He later developed one for Dover, NH that he never advertised to the public, and now he has fully developed one for Barrington, NH himself. He is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of New Hampshire studying Artificial Intelligence and hopes to run for a Federal political office someday. McElhiney also owns MCE123, which is a Marketing and Information Technology firm, also located in Barrington, NH, which is the umbrella company of Barrington Town News. McElhiney is more concerned with developing the community in Barrington, rather than making millions of dollars with this website.
Barrington Town News established a partnership with the Greater Barrington Chamber of Commerce on August 15th, 2019 in order to share content and promote each other’s priorities. The news website will be moderated, so only trusted sources of information will be allowed to publish stories on the site. MCE123 will host the website regardless of how much revenue it brings in, and there is a succession plan to hand the website over to the community, completely, at some point in time in the future, should Patrick R. McElhiney move out of Barrington, NH due to the high demand for the niche skill set he is learning currently. A town without a newspaper has no idea of how much commerce can be generated simply by having one place online to share all the information about the community – something other organizations in Barrington, NH can’t do.
Social Media platforms provide a lot more functionality than any of MCE123’s websites, with thousands of programmers on staff, however, Social Media alone doesn’t solve the problems of most small businesses that have little to no money to advertise. People spend more time on Social Media connecting with Friends and Family than doing business, and a giant Internet company in Silicon Valley is far, far away from where business occurs for most of America’s companies. Regardless of how many Social Media websites are produced, they will never be able to connect on a personal level with local businesses across America like websites such as Barrington Town News can – because they are local to where the businesses are based.
Small communities can develop into large commerce centers if their residents shop locally, businesses specialize, and more people are brought out of the dark economically. This type of commerce improves the local economy, creating more jobs for residents, while also reducing the carbon footprints of countless individuals. As more and more businesses break ground and open businesses in the community, a small town like Barrington can eventually turn into a concentrated micro-economy that will attract more remote customers because the specialists begin offering products and services that you can’t find anywhere else. All of this is possible simply due to sharing information freely on a platform that is owned by the community. Have you ever researched how many other small towns across America don’t have local community newspapers?
Chances are, they have no idea what they’ve been missing out on…