For more than a year, Alden has had no paper of its own. The Advertiser, Alden’s long-running local newspaper, paused in February 2025, leaving a hole in the community.
At the senior center this week, three longtime residents described what that silence has meant.
Dorothy Kryszak has read the Advertiser since she was a little girl in Bennington. “Just all the local information and even from surrounding areas, you know, and just to know the activities and what goes on in Alden. That’s the big thing. Just really missed that.” What she wants from whatever comes next is simple: the local activities, the people, the news of the town. “It was nice seeing the obituaries, but I get it on my phone,” she said. “But of course, just everything locally and what goes on.”
Helen Petrosky is newer, six years in Alden after Cheektowaga. She never subscribed to the Advertiser, but she knows the gap. “This is a beautiful community. I am so glad that I’m living here,” she said. “But a good percentage of us don’t know anything about Alden. And it’s about time.”
Jerry Karlnoski moved to Alden in 1971, when the Advertiser was a weekly. “The Alden Advertiser was a really strong paper. There were so many features that we’d look for every week,” he said. His favorite was the regular histories of activities and the old files. He remembers the correspondents: Steven Piper on environmental issues, and Ralph Stowell, the drugstore owner, writing Facts and Foolishness.
None of the three is angry about the Advertiser’s absence. They are simply used to it, and that may be the quietest loss of all. A town that stops expecting its own news eventually stops expecting much of anything from itself. Whatever replaces the Advertiser, if anything does, will have to rebuild that expectation before it can rebuild the paper.
The Alden Echo 
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