MONTCLAIR, N.J. — In a newsroom wedged into a storefront here, reporters worked on stories about the contentious issues driving the conversation around town, like a property reassessment that could affect taxes and testing in the public schools. An editor read through submissions for a St. Patrick’s Day limerick contest. And Kevin Meacham, the newspaper’s top editor, was in his office, looking at a mock-up of a front page on his computer, “XXXX” taking the place of headlines waiting to be written.

The team of journalists was preparing to publish the second issue of The Montclair Local.

This month, the weekly newspaper arrived for the first time in mailboxes around town. A local family decided to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into starting a news organization from scratch, hiring reporters to cover zoning board meetings and high school wrestling tournaments and whatever else residents in this New Jersey suburb care about.

The investment — by a software engineer who studied artificial intelligence, no less — seems like a quixotic one when so many newspapers are struggling and many readers prefer to catch up on town news on Facebook. But the engineer, Heeten Choxi, whose journalism experience was limited to a middle school newspaper, believes there is no better way than print to deliver local news.

“It looks beautiful,” Mr. Choxi, who has lived in Montclair for three years, said as he flipped through a copy of the first issue. “News tends to be more fragmented,” he added, referring to social media. “You find out about topics you’re already looking for. You don’t get that same broad exposure to all the different things happening in town.”