Queens Chronicle

About Queens Chronicle

The Queens Chronicle is a free weekly newspaper based in the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens, New York City. Founded in November 1978 as The Paper by Susan Merzon, it has grown from a small neighborhood sheet covering Howard Beach and Ozone Park into a borough-wide publication with nine separate weekly editions, a total circulation of 160,000, and an estimated readership of 400,000. Every Thursday, new editions are distributed at more than 950 locations across the borough of Queens.

The paper's website is qchron.com, where its local community, entertainment, politics, transportation, and school news for Queens is published daily.

Founding as The Paper (1978)

The Queens Chronicle was started by Susan Merzon on November 2, 1978, under the name The Paper. The original publication had a circulation of just 5,000 and covered the Howard Beach and Ozone Park neighborhoods in southwestern Queens. Merzon founded the paper as a community voice for neighborhoods that she felt were underserved by the borough's existing press, and the paper's early years were defined by hyperlocal coverage of civic associations, schools, and neighborhood disputes.

Renaming and Expansion (1984)

In 1984, with the goal of expanding beyond its original Howard Beach constituency, The Paper was renamed the Queens Chronicle. The new name signaled borough-wide ambitions, and over the following decades the paper steadily extended its coverage — from Astoria to Laurelton, Whitestone to Howard Beach, and all the neighborhoods in between — until it covered the entire borough of Queens.

The 1994 Fire

In 1994, the paper's offices suffered a devastating fire that destroyed much of its physical plant. The Chronicle rebuilt and continued publishing without missing its weekly rhythm, an episode that became part of the paper's institutional lore — a testament to the resilience of a family-run community newspaper.

Nine Editions, 160,000 Circulation

Today the Chronicle publishes nine different weekly papers, each tailored to a different region of Queens, plus editions for subscribers. Every Thursday, the editions are distributed at more than 950 high-traffic locations, news boxes, and through home delivery throughout the borough. As of May 2015, the paper reported a total circulation of 160,000, reaching an estimated 400,000 readers — making it one of the largest community newspapers in New York City by circulation.

The multi-edition structure allows the paper to combine borough-wide stories with intensely local coverage: a reader in Astoria and a reader in Howard Beach receive papers that share major Queens news but differ in their neighborhood reporting, civic calendars, and advertising.

Coverage Areas

The Chronicle's reporting spans the full range of community-newspaper concerns: local politics and government, transportation, schools and education, policing and public safety, land use and development, small business, and neighborhood civic life. Its entertainment and features coverage includes local arts, dining, and community events. The paper is known for its thorough coverage of Queens community board meetings, civic association gatherings, and the borough's elected officials — the unglamorous machinery of local democracy that larger outlets often skip.

Special editions and features punctuate the publishing calendar, alongside the classifieds that have long been a staple of the paper's business model.

Family Ownership and Leadership

The Queens Chronicle remains a family enterprise. Founder Susan Merzon's son, Mark Weidler, is the paper's current publisher, carrying the paper into its second generation of family leadership. Peter C. Mastrosimone has served as editor-in-chief since 2008, guiding the paper's newsroom through more than a decade and a half of coverage.

The paper is published by Mark 1 Publications, Inc., and is headquartered in the Rego Park/Glendale area of Queens. It is a member of the New York Press Association, the trade group representing the state's community newspapers.

Award-Winning Community Journalism

The Chronicle describes itself as an award-winning weekly, and it has collected honors from press associations for its community reporting over the years. Its longevity — in circulation since 1978 — itself marks an achievement in an era when community newspapers have closed by the hundreds across the United States.

The paper's editorial voice is that of a classic community weekly: boosterish toward neighborhood institutions, adversarial toward neglectful officials, and deeply attentive to the concerns of homeowners, parents, and small-business owners in the borough.

The Queens Media Landscape

Queens, with more than 2.3 million residents, is the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world — and one of the most intensely covered by community media. The Chronicle competes and coexists with a crowded field of borough outlets, including the Queens Ledger, the TimesLedger, the Queens Gazette, and the digital-native QNS. Its free weekly model, nine-edition structure, and deep roots in the borough's civic associations give it a durable niche: it is the paper of record for Queens community-board and civic life in a way that no daily or digital outlet has replicated.

Digital Presence

The paper's website, qchron.com, publishes local community, entertainment, politics, transportation, and school news for Queens on a daily basis, extending the Thursday print cycle into continuous digital coverage. The site carries the paper's full archive of stories and serves readers who encounter the Chronicle first online rather than at a news box.

Looking Ahead

Having survived a devastating office fire, the collapse of print advertising, and the digital transformation of local news, the Queens Chronicle enters its fifth decade as one of New York City's largest community newspapers. Its model — free, hyperlocal, multi-edition, family-owned — has proven resilient where many community papers have failed, and its 400,000-reader reach makes it an enduring institution in the civic life of Queens.

Civic Life and Community Boards

The Chronicle's most distinctive journalistic contribution is its relentless coverage of the machinery of Queens civic life: community board meetings, civic association gatherings, precinct council sessions, and the deliberations of the borough's elected officials. In a borough of more than two million people, these are the forums where zoning changes, street safety projects, school overcrowding, and park funding are actually decided — and the Chronicle has staffed them for decades.

This civic coverage gives the paper an influence disproportionate to its weekly frequency. Elected officials across Queens read the Chronicle because their constituents do, and a Chronicle editorial or investigation can set the agenda for a community board district. The paper's reporters cultivate deep source networks among civic leaders, tenant associations, and parent groups, producing the kind of accountability journalism that larger outlets — focused on City Hall and national politics — routinely miss.

The paper has also been a consistent chronicler of Queens' transformation: the development pressures reshaping Long Island City and Astoria, the small-business struggles along commercial corridors from Jamaica to Flushing, and the infrastructure debates — from LaGuardia Airport's reconstruction to bus network redesigns — that define daily life in the borough. Its transportation and schools coverage, highlighted in the paper's own description of its mission, speaks directly to the concerns of commuting parents and homeowners.

What distinguishes the Chronicle from its borough competitors is continuity: the same family ownership, the same Thursday rhythm, and the same commitment to neighborhood-level reporting that Susan Merzon established in 1978. While digital-native outlets chase virality and dailies retreat from community coverage, the Chronicle's nine editions continue to land in news boxes and storefronts across Queens — a print institution that has adapted to the web without abandoning the paper its readers have picked up for nearly five decades.