Intrepid young reporter keeps Waterman Road the most informed street in Roslindale

As a reporter, you know you've established a beat when people start e-mailing you tips.

Joseph Zyber is getting e-mail tips, four months after he started writing and publishing Waterman News, a weekly newspaper that covers his home street of Waterman Road in Roslindale.

Zyber is 10, and a fifth grader at the nearby Haley Pilot School.

Once a week now, he writes up his one-page newspaper, with one main story, a photo or two, a puzzle and a blurb. His mom imports his work into a publishing template, sends him back the file and then he takes it up to the Roslindale BPL branch, where he prints out enough copies for every house on Waterman Road, plus some houses on a couple of intersecting streets. And one afternoon a week, he goes door to door, delivering them.

He's covered everything from the recent rain-soaked Roslindale Porchfest, which had two participating houses on the street, to a local resident who has a cool garden - and from whom he got some gardening tips to write up.

One neighbor has asked about advertising in the paper, he said in a UHUb interview at his house yesterday. He and mom Elizabeth Perry, though, said they're not yet ready for that step, because it would mean more work.

Fortunately, he added, he's yet to have to deal with the bane of newspaper publishers everywhere - printing costs. So far, the $20 monthly printing credit that BPL gives library-card holders has been enough to support the weekly publishing for the short street with a couple dozen homes on it.

Zyber said he got the idea for a neighborhood newspaper last year while reading Stella by Starlight (UHub referral link) by Sharon Draper, which is about a young Black girl in a small North Carolina town when the Klan moves in, and which features a scene in which the protagonist considers writing her own newspaper to chronicle what is happening.

Perry said the paper has brought the street closer together, and cited something that happened at the recent Porchfest, The week before, Zyber had put a blurb in the News alerting readers to the performances, including on his street. It seemed like more people came out - despite the rain - and she said one of her neighbors saw the blurb and cooked up two pans of cookies, one for each performance site.

And, "I've really improved my social skills," because being out and about reporting and distributing the news means talking to people, Zyber said. "I really like delivering the newspapers," he said.

Zyber said it's way too early to say if he wants to make journalism a career, but he did say that his favorite thing at school is writing. "I really like writing," he said.