Just days after its 150th birthday, The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, announced Friday that, due to financial hardships, its final edition will be Aug. 31. That will leaveYoungstown as the largest U.S. city without a daily paper, according to the American Press Institute. The paper reaches 100,000 readers a day online and in print, and serves a region with twice that many people.
The owners, managers and publishers tried especially hard to cut costs and increase revenue in recent years, but when that wasn't enough to keep the paper open, they tried unsuccessfully to find a buyer. The Maag and related Brown families have owned the paper since 1887, which makes the decision to close the paper "gut-wrenching," write Publisher Betty Brown Jagnow and General Manager Mark Brown. "Our family’s lives have revolved around and been defined by this newspaper for 132 years . . . As the saying goes, we have ink in our veins."
When the paper closes, 144 employees and about 250 carriers will lose their jobs, WFMJ TV reports. "It’s another hit for a region that’s suffered 40 years of industrial job losses and is still reeling from GM’s shutdown of its giant Lordstown assembly line, but there’s a much deeper significance to this news," Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch writes: "The closing of Youngstown’s only daily paper is a blow not just to a struggling city that needs information, but to American democracy."
Residents in communities with no paper or reduced coverage are less likely to get accurate information and more likely to fall prey to deliberately biased or faked info. They're also less likely to vote in local elections, and fewer candidates tend to run for local office in such communities. The closures of The Vindicator, along with other, smaller papers and maybe other larger papers in the next 16 months "could have a huge impact on the 2020 election and whether Trump will win a second term to espouse his view that journalists are “the enemy of the people,'" Bunch writes.
Residents in communities with no paper or reduced coverage are less likely to get accurate information and more likely to fall prey to deliberately biased or faked info. They're also less likely to vote in local elections, and fewer candidates tend to run for local office in such communities. The closures of The Vindicator, along with other, smaller papers and maybe other larger papers in the next 16 months "could have a huge impact on the 2020 election and whether Trump will win a second term to espouse his view that journalists are “the enemy of the people,'" Bunch writes.
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2LrFF6d The Vindicator to shutter Aug. 31, making Youngstown, Ohio, the largest U.S. city without a daily paper - Entrepreneur Generations
0 Response to "The Vindicator to shutter Aug. 31, making Youngstown, Ohio, the largest U.S. city without a daily paper - Entrepreneur Generations"
Post a Comment