I’m not sure you were aware of it, but 2021 happens to be the year the Aurora Beacon-News turns 175 years of age.

And my birthday wish to the Beacon is that it hangs around for another 175.

Unfortunately, there’s reason to be worried about the very near future of this oldest business in Aurora. That’s because it’s hardly business as usual in our industry, with the internet taking such a large bite out of newspaper subscriptions and advertising in the last decade or so.

But right now the wolf at our door is a hedge fund called Alden Global Capital, which is set to take over ownership of our parent company next week. And that’s not good news for anyone who believes in freedom of press in general and specifically the importance of community journalism.

Alden has a well-deserved reputation for slashing and cutting when it sinks its corporate talons into newsrooms. All you need to do is Google “hedge fund” and “newspapers” to see how destructive this company has been as they cut costs to increase executive profits.

As a result, there’s been a growing backlash against Alden, especially since it began a campaign to take over Tribune Publishing, which includes the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and New York Daily News.

For a while we thought we had a savior with a rich philanthropist, who was putting in a bid to purchase Tribune Publishing in hopes of converting the company to nonprofit status. In creating a nonprofit to save The Baltimore Sun, he lined up another billionaire to purchase the company’s flagship Chicago Tribune and its suburban papers, which also include the Daily Southtown and the Post-Tribune in Northwest Indiana.

But at the last minute the second rich guy backed out, which has left a whole lot of journalists and community activists who understand the importance of newspapers scrambling to find other civic-minded investors to ride to the rescue. (We don’t know why that would-be hero backed out, but we do know it’s not because the company is in bad shape: Tribune Publishing remains profitable, even in the pandemic.)

Forums have convened. Heavy hitters have been approached. Petitions are being signed. And writers have used their voices to make desperate pleas to help us find that local savior.

That’s part of the reason I’m making that same call-out today: in the hopes we have a multimillionaire (a billionaire would work too) who would not mind leading the cavalry.

But it’s not just putting out a plea for big bucks that I’m writing this column days before the shareholders meeting that will decide our fate. We also need your support that doesn’t cost a dime and only a bit of your time.

Historically, newspapers have been the watchdogs as well as the heartbeat of any community, dispensing its news, forcing accountability from officials and sharing stories that shed light — good and bad — on our neighborhoods and our humanity.

If you are a reader, I don’t need to tell you our newspapers here and across the country don’t have the staff they once boasted; and, in fact, according to a 2020 Poynter Institute study, close to 2,000 papers have had to shut down since 2004.

Not to be a whiner … but few surviving newsrooms have been hit harder than our suburban titles, even though they cover large vibrant Chicago-area communities that deserve far more than what corporate America has whittled us to.

Yes, we need you, faithful readers. Desperately. Trust me, we take none of you for granted. And even though you may not always agree with what we say or what we cover, I’m going to be presumptuous enough to suggest you may not realize how much you would miss a local paper until it is gone.

For one thing, lots of mis- and-disinformation is getting out to the public these days. It’s certainly not as carefully vetted as the news provided by professional journalists, who often are the ones gathering the facts that get shared on social media.

No matter how much you want to label us as fake news or the enemy of the people, the truth is local newspapers work hard to provide truth … along with transparency and accountability. And I can personally guarantee the overwhelming majority of journalists I’ve been fortunate to work with since stepping into this newsroom nearly 30 years ago came to work each day with the intent of making the world a better place to live ... which includes finding the stories that matter to you.

Yes, it’s a lot tougher to be a watchdog when a staff has been so decimated. But it would be impossible if no watchdog was hanging around at all. After all, who is going to be around to shine lights where needed if newspapers go dark? Recent studies have shown that when there is lack of local media coverage, voter turnout drops, there’s less engagement from local politicians and local government has higher borrowing costs.

And you know what that means, right? Taxes go up.

Not to mention, a community loses a vital pathway to its history, which was pointed out by Aurora Historical Society Director John Jaros after he put together a display on the first anniversary of the Henry Pratt shooting in Aurora that was dominated by articles and pictures from The Beacon-News.

Even with our ever-shrinking staff, our suburban newsrooms over the last year alone have also worked overtime to make sure readers got critical information regarding COVID-19. And we’ve been on the front line, literally and figuratively, to bring coverage of the social unrest of 2020 that forever changed the places we call home.

That’s why I’m encouraging those who realize just how important a community newspaper is to write letters to the editor or sign our online petition at actionnetwork.org. We also are setting up a community outreach group to discuss the future of local news that will meet for the first time May 26 in Zoom. If you are interested in finding out more, email us at contact@sctguild.org.

The whole point is to shed light on this fact: newspapers are not just commodities but communities. And right now we need readers to demonstrate their support. To show whoever or whatever becomes our owners that you want robust journalism — and democracy — to continue beating in those communities.

dcrosby@tribpub.com