Posted on 08/13/2019 5:21:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- When the press stops rolling at The Vindicator this month, a lingering question will once again taunt the residents of the Mahoning Valley: How much collapse can one region take?
The family-owned newspaper announced in June -- just days after celebrating its 150th anniversary -- that it is permanently ceasing production on Aug. 31. Started in 1869 just months after Ulysses S. Grant was sworn into office, it has been run by the descendants of William F. Maag ever since he purchased it midway through Grover Cleveland's first term.
The closure will cost 144 employees and 250 carriers their jobs and comes just weeks after the General Motors Lordstown plant down the road turned out the lights, leading to thousands of job losses.
It is one of a series of gut punches that has dented this area's spirit since the collapse of the steel industry in September 1977. But losing a local newspaper feels like a bigger blow than most.
"Newspapers are the watchdogs who hold our civic institutions accountable and act as a cheerleader for the unique fabrics in our society," Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tim Ryan, the congressman who represents this region, told The New York Post.
As a young high school football star, Ryan enjoyed glowing coverage in The Vindicator. And as an elected official, he has felt the sting of its criticism.
"We've had our share of tensions, and they certainly have held me accountable, but that is their job -- to be that check on government -- and I cannot imagine our community without them," he said.
Closures like The Vindicator's are sadly more common than ever across the country, as old-school newsrooms struggle to compete with digital operations that aggregate web content but lack editorial oversight or seasoned reporters who have a deep understanding of their local area.
In the past 15 years, the country has lost 1,800 local news organizations, according to a report by the University of North Carolina Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. Half of the country's 3,143 counties have just one newspaper to cover sprawling, often isolated territories, while nearly 200 counties have no newspaper at all, the report said.
"A local newspaper is to a community what a central nervous system is to a body," said Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University. "Like the nerves in our body, the newspaper transmits vital and non-vital information throughout the community."
And without that, it's very difficult for a community to maintain its sense of self.
At the local school, Becky Ford has used The Vindicator (formerly known as The Youngstown Vindicator) as a resource for the American history and social studies classes she teaches. She also relies on it to stay connected with her community. "For us, it was like our New York Times," Ford said. "Sports, features, local social clubs, volunteer activities, class reunions ... you name it, they did it. If you called The Vindicator and asked (them) to be at your event, they were at your event taking pictures."
High school athletes, in particular, will suffer from a lack of coverage, said Rick Shepas, athletic director of Youngstown city schools.
It will be "devastating for the kids and their families not to have The Vindicator write those daily articles about the student-athlete's accomplishments both on and off the field," he said.
After 150 years of chronicling the Ohio Valley, beginning with the Reconstruction and followed by the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars, a Great Depression, civil rights, a moon landing, the Vietnam War, Watergate, 9/11 and the rise of populism, it is hard to believe that The Vindicator is no more.
Although the internet is a great source of information, the virtual communities that exist on sites like Reddit aren't local or even identifiable.
Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown worries that the disruption caused by the paper's closure won't stop at the city line.
"This is a problem for our whole country," Brown said. "Communities suffer when local journalism closes up shop, and we lose our vitality and connection to each other when that door closes for the last time."
He adds, "The bigger problem is: How are we going to stop those doors from closing here -- or anywhere?"
Sorry - when your primary mission is not to report the truth, but to make Republicans look bad at every turn, people are going to stop buying your product.
Call it 'trickle down disgust'.
In my hometown, having a paper route as a little kid was kind of a rite of passage. Best job I could have had as a little kid (except for the one house with the unchained husky they kept outside).
Everything comes to an end.
I lament the loss of newspapers. (That,s NEWSpapers.)
I applaud the loss of the MSM.
Agree, the MSM is the enemy, and should be treated as such.
They died because it was a bad product and not due to a lack of demand. The all went lefty....
HA! A demonicRAT who applauds a newspaper that holds government accountable?
Imagine that. A business that can’t survive in a district represented by a demonicRAT.
Allow me to translate this bit of Democratese: "Newspapers are the lapdogs who never hold Democrats accountable and act as a cheerleader for the criminal elements in Democrat politics."
Tears over closing the buggy-whip factory. Getting news the next morning is getting news late in today’s world.
The paper in my town went from 2 editions daily to just two insanely thin sections (Section B is just sports and classifieds)with the front page half taken up with some cut and paste Washington Post story that is wholly irrelevant to anything local.
>>And without that, it’s very difficult for a community to maintain its sense of self.
Local radio, tv, and newspapers are all gone.
All that’s left are entertainment/real estate developer rags.
And real estate investment is no longer local either, whether they live out of town, out of state, or another country, they have no ties to the community apart from the politicians they sponsor for the deals they want (whether than is zoning changes, liquor permits, etc.)
I agree that it is a problem in that nobody else has really picked up the ball to cover what your local school boards and town councils are up to. They have the power to tax, which is the power to destroy. And they are manned, as George Carlin wisely observed, by people whose darkest secrets prevent them from seeking higher office. With no eyeballs on them I suspect the level of mischief will get cranked-up from an 8 to an 11.
But I don’t know what the answer is. Certainly not public subsidies for newspapers, which is something many articles like this are arguing for.
Print newspapers are dying everywhere. Children and young people get their news over the Internet. Newspapers get 80% of their income from advertising. This money is now moving to the internet. The only way for newspapers to survive is to go digital online. Otherwise they will perish.
The Papers responded by ripping business even more accelerating the vicious cycle and the final result is what we are seeing here.
The solution is pro-business Media that does not attack Business unless there is absolutely no defending what a business has done.
I'm sorry to say that the media will have to implode before it can realize its fiasco.
Newspapers have become reliable activists for the Left Wing and totally unreliable for providing fair and balanced NEWS. Hmmm, what went wrong?
Businesses go under all the time. Why should anyone other than the employees care if some 4th tier propaganda organ fails?
Sorry weasel but trying to tie closing a Democrat propaganda machine to closing an auto plant to help gin up sympathy for our enemies in the media is a non-starter. How do I know the paper is a Democrat propaganda machine? You did say it was a newspaper right? Go away. I don’t have any sympathy for my enemies.
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