I compiled this archive of NY Times coverage through a selective word search via the newspaper’s online search engine of nine place or event names associated with the Mid-Hudson Valley (Orange, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia and Greene Counties). These names were chosen because they’re fairly distinct to the region (if not unique: e.g., Germantown is also the name of neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Nashville). This approach minimizes the noise from wider online searches; imagine all the irrelevant entries that result if you searched the New York Times for “Beacon” (including every turn of phrase like “a beacon in these dark times,” etc.) or “Woodstock” (not just a place or a music festival but also, and more often, a vague generational cultural signifier). Clearly this is not a complete archive of every mention of the Hudson Valley — the year 2016 looks especially skimpy to me — but it’s a good start.
The terms I searched on were: (1) Dia:Beacon (2) Basilica Hudson (3) Germantown (4) Millbrook (5) Newburgh (6) Poughkeepsie (7) Rhinebeck (8) Rosendale (9) Windham.
When one of the place names generated a result, that entry typically listed other Hudson Valley locales, including other search terms, which means soon I encountered recurring entries across different searches. An editorial convention of New York Times reporting is that articles will often introduce readers to smaller Hudson Valley towns via their distance from a notable city: e.g., “20 miles north of Poughkeepsie.” In this way, searches on Poughkeepsie and Newburgh — the two biggest cities of the Mid-Hudson Valley, and more uniquely spelled than the next three biggest cities, Kingston, Beacon, and Hudson— are quite effective.
I also searched on “Peter Applebome” — currently the Times’ deputy national editor, who wrote the much-debated 2011 article “Williamsburg on the Hudson” — just to see if he had other Hudson Valley writings. Sure enough, he wrote a recurring “Our Towns” column in the 2000s that added many more articles about small-town Hudson Valley to the archive. (This author search didn’t add any new entries to the archive about the region’s small cities, however.)
Another convention of New York Times reporting is worth noting: the Hudson Valley and its specific locales were often reported along other sub/ex-urban areas like Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. I leave to the reader to decide whether these regions are all alike, and/or whether this illustrate what Times writers and editors presume are the most relevant frames for ‘their readers.’
I cited only one piece from news stories that the Times reported over consecutive days in multiple articles (most often lurid law-and-order stories). This may understate the ways that certain Hudson Valley places (like Poughkeepsie and especially Newburgh) seize the attention of NY Times readers — usually in a negative way.
This archive excludes certain kinds of New York Times pieces. Most importantly, I didn’t count Calendar and other event listings that featured the names I searched. (Note that the Times’ Westchester edition began using a new section headline, “What to do in the Hudson Valley,” in 2015). Also, I didn’t include Weddings announcements — a genre that has been quite good to the Hudson Valley.
Other things I excluded: Opinion pieces and Letters to the Editor; Obituaries; sports reporting narrowly focused; art, book, food, and restaurant reviews; electoral events, court cases, and government forums incidentally held in the region; news of events, activities and trends happening specifically within the region’s colleges; articles where the only Hudson Valley reference was expert quotes from the region (Poughkeepsie’s Scenic Hudson and Millbrook’s Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies of Ecosystem Studies are go-to sources); and Hudson Valley articles and references that are mostly historical or scientific in nature.
I made a judgement about including articles where individuals’ biographical connections to the Hudson Valley (e.g., attending college) occurred in the past. You would be surprised and eventually bored by how many people written about in the Times have lived somewhere up here at one point in life; I tended to include these of they conveyed some local feature or view of life in the Hudson Valley.