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?"
Many small time papers are going digital with a daily online version in addition to the print version. I see the print version disappearing within a decade.
Cable TV is next.
This report doesn’t seem to resemble any of the papers I’m familiar with.
That is the problem with our once weekly local paper, they report Left Wing crap at the local level. They went whole hog on supporting a Gravel Pit on a main road the town has a hard enough time keeping up. Half a dozen jobs or so. Never mind the fact 1 public and 1 private school are on this road. UPS, USPS use it heavily, it’s curvy, slow speed as a result 30-45 mph, damage to the road, tires, windshields, danger to the school buses and kids, or the resident stepping into the road to collect their mail.
We have tarp laws they’d ignore, or the gravel would bounce out of the holes in the trucks that hog the 2 lane road and go flying into windshields. They don’t want to pay to have fixed, no assurances they’d keep the road fixed. Got defeated on the ballot thankfully as enough citizens were intelligent enough to understand what a gravel pit and all those dump trucks would do to their cars and to the road.
Sensationalist headlines like this article are one reason reason people have bailed on print media.
The paper mill workers in Thunder Bay must be wondering about their future...
“Newspapers are the watchdogs who hold our civic institutions accountable and act as a cheerleader for the unique fabrics in our society,”
I agree, but they (newspapers) gave up doing that 80 years ago. They went from being a watchdog to a lapdog.
I am happy to see them all go away
I see the same problem with TV news here in Pittsburgh.
If somebody gets shot in a bad neighborhood, a low-lying neighborhood gets flooded out, or some school closes due to declining enrollment, they go out of their way contort that into some reason to bash Trump.
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.
Anybody can create a Facebook group. This group can be on any subject.
My small town has four or five groups.
One is for yard sales.
One if for local history
One if for complaints and items of community interest
Plus the fire and police department each have a group.
(I get weekly reports of fires and crime from them)
The city itself has a group where they post their meetings
Almost all the functions a newspaper performed for the local community is being covered.
And I don’t care if you don’t like facebook or have never signed on. That is your right. Good for you. I am happy for you. I will however ignore all your comments on how evil facebook is.
The ghosts of buggy whip makers are moaning in agreement.
Newsprint is a bit different than tissue...
gannett was bought by gatehouse last week . . . although the financing has gotten sketchy since they announced the deal.
Close.
Grand Rapids, Mi area.
Almost all of the papers in the southern lower peninsula were consolidated into the “MLive group” which keeps them all from folding by sharing resources (low quality local writers and wire copy), and otherwise producing the same newspaper with just a slightly different order to the local articles, and with a different name on top of the fold to fool older people into thinking they are getting a local paper like they did years ago.
I would not be shocked if the same thing happened in Indiana too!
Once the newspapers started hiring people from ‘journalism schools’ - which are filled with hate-filled Leftists - their days were numbered.
They asked for it.
Food recipes, Orange Man Bad, Why White People/Civilization Suck and yesterdays’s sport scores.
You're correct. Movies used to advertise showtimes. Online now. Auto dealers, online now. Employment, online now. Nobody checks the stocks in the paper, anymore. Additional problem in small towns is that advertising makes less difference. Everybody knows everybody, so either they'll do business with you or they won't. If Fred likes Tom, he'll get his gas at Tom's store. If Fred hates Tom, he'll use a half a tank of gas to avoid buying gas from Tom.
Also, nobody wants to be a reporter. Reporting is hard work. It's going through court records, attending mind-numbingly boring council meetings, and looking at things that some people would just as soon not be looked at.
Everyone wants to be an opinion columnist. Makes sense, cause you write a few "Dear Diary" paragraphs a week, and write the world according to me, and get a bigger name than the people who are reporters.
The last reporters anyone talked about were Woodstock and Birdbrain, and they were nothing but mouthpieces for the FBI to take out Nixon.
Not just Craigslist. Even before that, Greensheet, and a few other weekly "ad only" publications gutted a lot of the classifieds. Gotta admit, I miss the old personals. Two of my favorites: "Wanted to trade: Harley with wrecked front end for motorized wheelchair" and "Biker looking for old lady, real classy type, stretch marks OK."
Excellent point.
If I owned a paper I’d be hiring anybody BUT J-school grads to work for me.
They’d bring a refreshing real world perspective.
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.