Filling News Deserts #271 By Hank Silverberg I have begun writing news stories again. This time it's free-lance work for a local non-profit newspaper serving the small communities around Fredericksburg, Virginia. The online newspaper, the Fredericksburg Advance, is hyper-local, focusing on city councils, boards of supervisors, school boards and other news in local jurisdictions that don't get the attention of the surrounding big market media in Washington, D.C. or Richmond. There is a local newspaper, The Free Lance Star, but that once-venerable publication may have lost some of its local focus since it was bought out by a large corporation (Berkshire Hathaway), which owns 32 other dailies and a number of weekly papers. This is not criticism of the The Free Lance Star. They have to make mo