Scarsdale Inquirer

The articles, most of which are written by the same three or four reporters, are often poorly written. However, when the newspaper allows high school students to write pieces, the articles usually turn out better.

Writing style and fact-checking are of poor quality and need improvement.


Enjoyed feature on Larry Edoff and the LoveProject   June 7, 2003
Deborah Mahony (Westchester County, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I think that the Scarsdale Inquirer did a very nice job on and article they published on May 23, 2003, on the front page of the Arts & Entertainment section.

The article featured Larry Edoff, a local resident and talented musician/singer-songwriter and his involvement in the LoveProject. The layout was very nice (photos, song lyrics) and the article was informative.

I'm a little surprised that they do not have an online presence, so people could read some of the articles on the web. ...


My Friday Fix   March 25, 2004
Kurt Banks (Scarsdale, NY)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

I love the Scarsdale Inquirer. It does have the general material--press releases, some calendar announcements, etc.--that can be found online. But it also has a number of stupendous, personal stories about local issues and local people. I know it has won countless New York Press Association Awards and it's very clear why. It's a cornerstone of Scarsdale culture and there really isn't any competition in terms of journalism, although the Internet does offer very useful tidbits of raw data that can be more timely and easy to get to while checking e-mail.


The Best Local Newspaper in New York   July 22, 2006
HAROLD J. REYNOLDS (SCARSDALE, NEW YORK USA)
The Scarsdale Inquirer is the best local paper in New York. I challenge anyone to identify another local paper that matches the Inquirer. Its quality is the local paper that The New York Times would publish if the Times decided to become a local paper.
"New York City', wrote William Maxwell,"is a place where one can weep on the sidewalk in perfect privacy". If an old woman was weeping on the sidewalk in Scarsdale in perfect privacy, Linda Leavitt, the Inquirer's editor, would go directly to the street to inquire gently into the cause.The cause would never be reported or otherwise repeated. Leavitt would return to her desk and staff and, without ado, proceed with the thousand tasks that add up every Friday to the perfect local paper in New York to which every resident looks forward. The New York Times may fail of delivery and its customer might feel
a minimal sense of loss of news about distant places. However, there always is TV. Click, click goes the monitor for scenes of desert fighting, tsunamis, talking heads and the ever present gasbag politican. When one fails to receive the Inquirer, however, the loss is personal, a sense of intimacy with our surroundings is gone, nothing on the grey screen is there to supply it. Reports of our children, schools, school games, teachers, ministers, trees, dogs, cats, cats up trees, police directing traffic in the midst of a snow storm, gardens, letters to the editor reproving, congratulating, denouncing, and oh, yes, the week's Police Reports. Everyone reads them hopeful for a dime's worth of scandal. The Inquirer's police reports alone are worth the annual subscription. Who was the husband who was beaten by his wife with a broom because he attempted entry into the house - and perhaps into the wife - in violation of a protective order? Who is the 16 year old girl who telephoned the police to take her parents away because their fighting interupted her advanced placement courses? What drunken bond trader pounded on a house door addressing "dirty words" to a cowering housewife within, a wife not his own, for he had stumbled to the wrong door. The police chided him, the frightened housewife pointed to his house across the road, and there he went repentant.There is Sin in Scarsdale Village, but it's local, and local sin is smaller than, and more readily forgivable, than Big City sin. I could go on, but it's Friday and I have just received the Inquirer from the mailman. Time for coffee, cake, and one of Leavitt's editorials.