Neighborhood newspaper celebrates its first year

The Sunset Post is turning one. Originally edited, designed, distributed and self-funded by its editor-in-chief, Lorenzo Tijerina, the Post has featured more than 60 contributors in its first year, distributes 4,000 newspapers a month and is still growing.

Throughout September, the Post is celebrating its first birthday with a monthlong fundraiser at Liebre Cafe, 4017 Seventh Avenue. It is also throwing a public party at Sunset Stoop, 4114 Fifth Avenue, on September 13.

Humble origins

The Sunset Post's first issue was printed in September 2025.

Although Tijerina wrote most of the stories in the first issue, he had support in producing it. George Fiala, publisher of the Red Hook Star-Revue and the Village Star-Revue, offered guidance, connected him with a reliable newspaper printer and drove him to pick up the papers.

The support of Tijerina's wife, Tania Barnes, and his son, Max, was also crucial to producing the first issue.

"It was hard at first," Barnes said. "He was working one-hundred-hour weeks for no money at all, so I had to be both the primary breadwinner and the primary caregiver. But pretty quickly, within a few months, that changed. It was still a lot of work, but there were a lot of people who joined to take some of the workload from Lorenzo. Rachel [Barnard] helped with distribution and Adriana [Alba] helped with social media, for example."

"Tania and Max are thanked in every issue of the paper. Without them, none of this would have been possible," Tijerina said.

Added value to the neighborhood

George Fiala was immediately supportive when Tijerina told him he wanted to start a newspaper.

"Independent newspapers are vital for democracy, plain and simple," Fiala said.

Still, Fiala was not sure whether the Sunset Post would succeed in today's local-news market. He founded the Red Hook Star-Revue in 2010 and the Village Star-Revue in 2024. Producing both is a monthly grind.

"It's so hard. No one reads newspapers anymore, it's hard to sell ads, it's hard to get local support," Fiala said.

Elsewhere in the interview, he lamented that even a mayor as progressive as Mamdani seems not to appreciate the value of local newspapers, instead filling his press pool mostly with digital creators and influencers.

"I grew up in a world where the local media was your local paper. Cell phones feed you stories you think you want to read based on what you're already reading. But with a local newspaper, you're going to read about stuff you otherwise never would have found out about," Fiala said.

Jess Valenzuela, an employee of City League Coffee Roasters—a subject of a Sunset Post story and one of the places where readers can pick up the paper—appreciates the newspaper for similar reasons.

"I grew up in Staten Island reading the Staten Island Advance. I feel connected to the Sunset Post in the same way I felt connected to that paper," Valenzuela said.

"Like the story about the comic book store on Fifth Avenue closing," added Selma Althaibani, a coworker of Valenzuela's. "I wouldn't have found out about that until months later if it hadn't been for the paper."

A party to celebrate the Post's first year

During the Post's first year, Tijerina assembled a mostly stable team of contributors, became a finalist for the David Prize, consistently sold advertisements to support the paper and began looking toward the next year and beyond.

"In the next few years, I would like to have a small staff that is paid a reasonable salary, as well as feature more contributors who don't think of themselves as reporters, but people who just see themselves as Sunset Park residents who have a story to tell," Tijerina said.

Further down the line, Tijerina hopes to have a permanent office and publish weekly rather than monthly.

"But for now, we've shown that we have a strong product that the community has come to embrace," Tijerina concluded.

To celebrate this achievement, raise money for the paper and build greater awareness of the newspaper in the neighborhood, the Post is hosting a series of events.

The first lasts all month. An art show is already on view at Liebre Cafe, featuring work made by contributors to the paper and by artists who have appeared in its pages. Proceeds from art sold during the show support the paper.

On Saturday, September 12, from 9 a.m. to noon, Post contributors will sit outside Liebre to meet the community and sell art and—for the first time—Sunset Post merchandise. One item will be a tote bag with an illustration of a cat sitting on a pile of Sunset Post newspapers. The cat belongs to Mara Zalite, a photographer for the Post, and the illustration was created by Oliver Steyn-Reimer, a high school student and contributor to the paper.

On Sunday, September 13, from 4 to 9 p.m., the Post will throw a public party at Sunset Stoop. Children are welcome until 8 p.m.

The party will include raffles for gift cards from local businesses, a salsa lesson, a community collage made with old issues of the paper, trilingual karaoke and more.

The next day, Lorenzo Tijerina and everyone else who helps produce Sunset Park's only newspaper will get back to work.