Dick, The Newspaperman of Roosevelt Island

If you want a dose of Main Street U.S.A. right here in New York City, look no further than Roosevelt Island.

What you'll find on this narrow 40-block-long strip of land in the East River between Manhattan and Queens is a journalist named Dick Lutz and several dozen residents who believe deeply in where they live and the art of building community around a small local newspaper.

"A town like Roosevelt Island needs a newspaper pretty badly because The New York Times doesn't cover us very well," says Lutz, a veteran journalist with more than forty years of experience in public television. "So what ends up happening is The Main Street WIRE becomes our primary source of information about what's going on here." 

Meet Lutz and his team of volunteers who put out the free biweekly newspaper about Roosevelt Island news, politics and culture and make it their mission to deliver it to every door on the island.