Posted on 07/01/2019 10:34:15 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
The list of daily newspapers that have shut down grows more rapidly by the year, not to mention those that have had massive layoffs. Monday, another of America's oldest dailies, the Vindicator, which serves Youngstown, Ohio, said its last edition would be on Aug. 31. The paper had just celebrated its 150th anniversary.
The local television station reported that 144 people will lose their jobs. The Vindicator was of modest size by daily newspaper standards. It claimed 100,000 online and newspaper readers. Like many papers, it has been owned by a family. Due to unsustainable losses, the Maag-Browns could not find a buyer. Nor could they afford to keep the doors open. Publisher Betty Brown Jagnow and General Manager Mark Brown wrote, "It is with broken hearts that we say goodbye and a final thank you." It was not unlike the statements by so many newspaper owners have penned recently.
The shuttering of the Vindicator comes just as the New Orleans Times-Picayune merges into the New Orleans Advocate. Virtually the entire Times-Picayune staff lost their jobs. MediaNews Group, famous for its newspaper cost-cutting, recently sliced about a third of the jobs at the Reading Eagle. It is also 150 years old. MediaNews has sliced jobs from Denver to Boston. The company made an unsuccessful run at a buyout of Gannett, an effort the Gannett board killed just weeks ago. And the problem of cuts in the newspaper industry has become an epidemic. A Pew study last year showed that "At least 36% of the largest newspapers across the United States as well as at least 23% of the highest-traffic digital-native news outlets experienced layoffs between January 2017 and April 2018." The largest newspaper chains in America have not fared much better. All have had cut jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Can The Flint Journal be far behind?
There is a band from Youngstown called The Vindys.
“Vindy” is what locals call that paper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GPxIkpHcP8
That was the one. They used to sponsor a primary debate as I recall.
I seem to remember a thread about their passing now that you have awakened my memory.
Big and small newspapers and magazines have been going out of business and/or losing readership.
HOWEVER!!!!!!
Liberals have been very active and very good at making the transition to the “NEW MEDIA” online, where their readers have followed. They still control the majority of the online media and the majority of radio and TV outlets.
So, they DON”T feel the losses and have actually made gains overall.
I think the legal profession is the only one where the law of supply and demand doesn’t apply.
Me too. When my Dad was alive and living in Allentown he had that thing delivered. What Leftist broadsheet.
This story reminds me of another post on FR a week or two ago about this snowflake who went $200,000 in debt to get a BA in journalism and an MA in “social journalism” and now doesn’t think he can pay it back, or even feels obligated to do so.
I say NO to taxing me to pay off loans to people with such little sense.
“The major $$$ income for newspapers now is Political $$$.
Paid political ads from both parties. If they can get both parties fighting...they make more money.”
i really doubt that’s true anymore ... since practically no one reads newspapers anymore, it’s a complete waste of money to advertise in them for anything ...
i suspect that obituaries is actually one of their major sources of revenue: when they lost classifieds, they jacked obit rates up through the roof ... but even that is probably going down the tubes because their rates are so high and no one reads them, i’ve seen a lot of obits move to online obit sites ...
If it were my decision, I'd cancel it, yesterday, but Mrs. Alaska keeps looking for my obituary and won't cancel the paper until she sees it.
The paper has to be losing money, they have cut back so much, that once or twice a week, they run the comics in black and white to save a few bucks of colored ink.
Without the ads, there probably aren't more than 10-12 pages of print.
SAD!
Unfortunately, that is the case.
Die in the darkness fake snooze!
I don’t know either, but I hate to hear/read of people losing their jobs. Many of them are over 40 and/or have children or spouses with serious health problems and need the insurance.
it can be devastating to families.
Investors Business Daily
Goo hoo. McDonald’s is always hiring.
The Vindicator was a leftist rag...attacking Trump every day on the editorial page..with foul cartoons and opinions,,slanting news stories into negative reports on Trump. Tim Ryan represents the area, I quit buying it years ago.. I hope the nearby Warren Tribune Chronicle,,,which is somewhat conservative...picks up the slack
Good riddance!
It has to be 10 years since I bought a newspaper. On a plane there was a copy of USA Today I picked up and read about 2 years ago. I knew everything it offered by the article titles and then I noticed the price. 2 dollars! Wow! No wonder papers are dying. Old news and expensive! Bad combo.
The paper I grew up with. Happy to be in Florida now. I weep for the Lehigh valley. I grew up in Whitehall near Whitehall high school. However, went to central catholic.
Isn’t ‘the press’ the ONLY part of the economy in a slump? The rest of the country’s doing just fine...
Maybe newspapers should make a small effort to write a one or two things a week for the half of their potential readers who are conservative.
I mean, even McDonalds would go under if they only served white liberal ‘elites’...
I get the news of a death on Facebook. Heck they even transition an active Facebook account to a memorial now a days. Zero need for newspapers even obit section.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.