Posted on 07/10/2009 6:31:54 AM PDT by abb
The Eagle Times, a six-day-a-week newspaper that serves Claremont and surrounding towns, is publishing its last edition today, the owner told employees Thursday.
In a four-paragraph memo distributed to workers, company president Harvey Hill said Eagle Publications will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Friday.
Hill said his family is unable to continue underwriting the losses of the company, which also includes three weekly publications.
"We did our best to continue the operations, but the economy and the changes in the newspaper industry have made it impossible to continue this business," the memo reads. He thanked the workers for their support over the years.
The abrupt news took state officials off guard.
Roy Duddy, interim director of the state Division of Economic Development, said the state will initiate its Rapid Response Team today. Part of the effort will involve contacting the Eagle Times to see if it will cooperate.
Duddy said he believes about 120 people work for the company, but he could not confirm that Thursday night. He said laws require employers to give workers and communities a 60-day notice before they close.
State officials will investigate whether the law was followed or whether it applies to Eagle Publications, he said.
One of the smallest daily newspapers in the state, the Eagle Times published Sunday through Friday. The newspaper's coverage area included Sullivan County and towns in three bordering New Hampshire counties. It also covered communities and sold newspapers in Windsor and Windham counties in Vermont.
Claremont Mayor Deborah Cutts said she thought the newspaper had been doing well. It had improved its online product, and more national news had been showing up in its Sunday edition, she said.
"I don't know what a city does without a newspaper. I can't imagine," Cutts said.
The newspaper provided school news, community news and advertising, she said. Cutts had expected reporters would write about the upcoming city elections later this year, she said.
Senior citizens especially relied on the newspaper to keep in touch, she said. No other weekly newspapers cover Claremont, and The Valley News in Lebanon only shows up for big stories, she said.
Cutts said she'd like to see a company come in and save the Eagle Times.
Claremont, a city of 13,700 on the Connecticut River, has seen a renaissance in recent years. Once-abandoned mills now house a Common Man restaurant and a computer company. Condo conversions are underway at another mill, and the city boasts redone sidewalks, a walking bridge and a path along the Sugar River.
The city had a 6 percent unemployment rate in May, slightly lower than the state average.
"Just when Claremont has pulled itself up from our bootstraps, who's going to tell our story now?" she said.
Eagle Publications also published three weekly newspapers. The Connecticut Valley Spectator concentrated on communities north of the Eagle Times core area; The Message covered Ludlow, Vt., and surrounding towns; and The Weekly Flea ran advertising and classifieds and was distributed through most Connecticut River communities.
In his memo, Hill said Friday's paper will be the final edition of the Eagle Times. He told workers they would receive their last paycheck and earned vacation next Wednesday, the usual payday. Their health coverage will continue to month's end.
ping
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090710/NEWS04/907100372/1003/NEWS02
Eagle-Times, 2 other papers close doors
Publisher to declare bankruptcy today
Anyone know if this is a ‘crat paper?
So was this another liberal fishwrap going to the recycle center for dead fishwraps?
I guess we all wonder if this was the usual liberal rag, or a decent local newspaper?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/07/dear-new-york-times-please-charge-me-more-than-5-for-your-web-site/
Dear New York Times: Please charge me more than $5 for your web site.
http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/
R.I.P. Claremont Eagle Times
No worries! The Rapid Response Team is on the way.! First, make sure the corpse followed the law in dying,.......
Here’s their web page.
From a quick glance it appears they are (or were) a reasonably even-keeled local newspaper that concentrated on local stuff. But I never regularly read it. Perhaps some NH FReepers would better know.
If they weren’t dogmatic, it brings into question the theory that conservative newspapers (or at least those that aren’t moonbat liberal) can make a financial go of things.
In other words, its more about technological progress than about ideology.
That said, we must remember Grampa Dave’s famous Dixie Chicks Marketing Strategy theory which states, “How smart is it for a a business to deliberately piss off half its customers from day one?”
Exactly, the Press has been biting the hand that feeds them for decades. They've gone Anti-Business, Anti-Family, Anti-America - so is it any wonder that Americans have left them in droves? It's simple to turn it around. Get Pro-Busines, Pro-family, Pro-America news and entertainment that Americans want to hear. Business will see that and want their business advertised with it.
The MSM has to woo business back, but I think they've gone too far left to do it.
Isn’t it great that the “Rapid Response Team” is going to check to see if they are able to force the company to lose even more money! What a country! And politicians wonder why the threat of more taxes and regulations is currently deterring business from hiring now.
Thanks for bring this to our attention. What the hell is going on. If a company can’t make it financially, they probably can’t last 60 more days:
“The abrupt news took state officials off guard.
Roy Duddy, interim director of the state Division of Economic Development, said the state will initiate its Rapid Response Team today. Part of the effort will involve contacting the Eagle Times to see if it will cooperate.
Duddy said he believes about 120 people work for the company, but he could not confirm that Thursday night. He said laws require employers to give workers and communities a 60-day notice before they close.
State officials will investigate whether the law was followed or whether it applies to Eagle Publications, he said.”
Well, I don’t think it’s healthy for a newspaper to thumb its nose at half its potential subscribers, whether they are liberal OR conservative. Fox succeeds because it’s one relatively conservative news source vs. all the rest of them. But even Fox is actually pretty well balanced in the middle.
The liberal rags have a very serious problem. They’ve driven away all their conservative readers over many years, plus those who simply want to know what’s happening, but if they try to reach out to them now, then they will offend their current readership, who are presumably almost all moonbats. So they’re liable to lose more liberals than they will gain conservatives if they try to move a little to the right. That’s the limb they’ve crawled out on.
Agreed. But I must tell you from all I have studied and read over the past 3 1/2 years convinces me that to try and start a paper newspaper or magazine no matter if its liberal or conservative would be a very dicey financial proposition.
If I had a couple of billion to invest, buying a big-name newspaper or TV network would be way down on my list of places to put that money.
We must never forget that in the final analysis, the media is in the business of putting advertising in front of potential customers, not the entertainment or news business.
Abb, your words are always reasonable; however, they posted articles from the AP (there's one right on their website as we speak), which means they have been feeding people liberal crud for as long as they belonged to the AP. Knight-Ridder and other news aggregators wouldn't have been much better choices.
It doesn't matter if their local stories were “unbiased” if they can't provide balance to the state, national, and world articles they printed.
There’s no question the AP, KR, etc. are liberal propagandists and so I’m sure that didn’t help them.
But ALL newspapers - large, small, conservative, liberal - are jammed for money these days. And used to, owning a newspaper was the closest thing to owning a your own gold mine. Their net profit margins were in the 20-30% range.
No more.
Hahaha! I love it. He’s going chapter 7 and the state is going to investigate to make sure he followed all the rules? Please, what are they going to do? Chapter 7 is complete liquidation. There’s no money to recover from a business who’s doors are shut for good.
That neimanlab link had some interesting numbers. On weekdays the NYT prints under 1 million copies. That’s amazing. Even my parents who love to read the paper are going to cut back to just Sundays. Not because they don’t like it, but because people just don’t have the time anymore to sit around and read old news.
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/salons_under_scrutiny.php?page=all
Salons Under Scrutiny
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/07/ta070909.html
Think Again: Conflicts of Interest by the Wealthy and for the Wealthy
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003992729
More Gannett Cuts at Dailies in Four Big States
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003992398
Gannett Cuts Hit Cincy, Louisville, Phoenix — 165 Jobs Gone
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003992547
‘Des Moines Register’ Lays Off 36, 6% of Staff
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