Cue theme music from your favorite television Police detective show.
A crime will soon be committed in six local communities.
The victim? A 119-year-old tradition of local media coverage.
The accused? A known serial killer of local news.
Alleged motive? Corporate greed.
Gannett Co., a corporate media conglomerate that owns hundreds of newspapers across the United States, surprised readers in Summit and Portage Counties on February 22 when it announced the death of six of the seven remaining original weeklies once owned by the Dix Publications family chain.
The news broke my heart.
The News-Leader, Twinsburg Bulletin, and Aurora Advocate will cease print editions on March 22. Four days later The Stow Sentry, Falls News-Press and Tallmadge Express will cease.
The remaining weekly paper in the once mighty local news stable, The Hudson Hub-Times, will continue to print a Sunday edition.
Gannett acquired the newspapers in a 2019 merger with GateHouse Media.
The company is alleged to have “faced significant business challenges in recent years due to a decline in print advertising and readers adopting digital news
sources.”
The quote was in the February 22 piece, announcing the local news demise.
I think the quote should have read: “We’ve systematically decimated most of our newsroom staff and no longer care about the communities we once served.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read; “News coverage from these communities will remain online at BeaconJournal.com, which is staffed by Summit County’s largest team of local journalists.”
The Akron staff cannot find enough local news to fill its own print pages.
The newspaper site can only be accessed for free for a few visits. After the allotted number of visits, a paywall will surround the reader who must then subscribe. The site also offers a variety of articles that are only available via subscription.
I’m sure some form of online presence will exist for a short period of time with the six.
I’m also sure the powers-that-be will soon tire of filling the online site with local news and paste it with inane national content, misplaced headlines, and displaced pictures like those which fill printed pages of the Akron paper and its twin, the once respected daily Record-Courier, based in Kent. Community journalism will soon be extinct in most of Summit and Portage counties because Gannett has fired most of the editors and reporters in a process begun in 2017 when Dix Publications was sold to GateHouse Media.
How do I know? I was there years before the first firing.
On March 3, 2003, I was hired as a general assignment reporter for the Maple Heights-Press, which at the time was one of several weeklies in the family-owned chain of Dix Publications.
Being a reporter was my dream job. I loved writing and loved the excitement of a breaking story.
I covered crime, courts, education, some sports, city meetings, elections, features, and police blotters. I was also given space for what soon became an award-winning column, “Smoke Signals,” named to honor my 3.5 drops of Cherokee blood.
It was an exciting coverage area filled with crime and large stories. The first story I covered for the paper was a homicide, as was my last, almost six years later.
We were a small link in a mighty chain and often beat other local publications, including the Akron Beacon Journal, with major news headlines.
We had a newsroom of maybe 8.
As journalists with community newspapers, we covered issues people wanted to read.
Soon the gritty feel of a breaking story and the stain of fresh news ink was in my blood and on my fingertips.
The job was my passion.
The Maple Heights-Press and its sister paper the Bedford Times-Register closed in 2008 before the company was sold. I was one of two reporters transferred to other papers in the chain. Ironically, the Maple Heights newspaper was named the No. 1 weekly paper in its division the week it closed.
I missed that paper. But I soon learned to love my new education beat with the Hudson Hub-Times.
My memories of community journalism could fill a book, maybe two.
I’ve cried with a parent recounting a frightened call from her daughter on September 11. The mom sang a favorite childhood song and had just enough time to say “I love you,” for the final time, before Flight 93 went silent in a Pennsylvania field.
I’ve met Tuskegee Airmen, listening in awe to vivid memories of heroic battles in the air and bouts of bitter racism on the ground at home.
I interviewed a local sailor who launched the first volley of missiles beginning a long desert war and talked to ambushed Marines who lost several members in an enemy attack.
As a community journalist I’ve written about the Underground Railroad and John Brown.
I’ve covered conditions at Guantanamo Bay and the nightly insurgent shelling of American soldiers at a forward base in Iraq.
I stumbled across a story in which a local cupcake shop’s recipe was being used by the FBI to thwart Al-Qaeda bomb makers.
All things covered were due to community journalism.
Now it’s going to die.
The current hierarchy doesn’t realize community news is more than just headlines made up in a corporate office and slapped on a story.
Community news is my father counting bylines against those of another reporter and admonishing me with a smile “Emily had more bylines than you this week.” Dad died in 2004. I’ll keep the memory alive until I die.
Community journalism is a photograph of a woman kneeling and weeping on a sidewalk in front of her burning home or asking the parent of a murdered child what she wanted the killer to know.
No story was too big and nothing was too small.
Community journalism is covering seasonal yard decorations, students in science fairs, educators hired, administrators fired, and award-winning flower gardens have grown.
Community journalism combines well-read breaking news with the renaming of a street, a new church roof addition, or a senior center dance.
I loved my job and I loved each community I covered.
The news was more than a smartphone app.
For over 13 years I had a career I loved and assumed would last forever.
However, the comfort level began to wane soon after GateHouse took over.
Staffers knew what was coming – downsizing. We all read what happened with other newsrooms swallowed by the corporate giant. But we hoped it wouldn’t happen to us.
It did.
An editor who had been with the company for more than 40 years was the first casualty.
Roger, an editor for the company’s daily newspaper, was ordered early one morning to clean out his desk/office and did not return.
Of course, the new managers were kind enough to offer him an empty box for his trouble and a security escort from the building.
Others were to follow.
Staff decreased. Workloads increased. My pay remained the same.
The new bosses showed appreciation for our hard work by permanently canceling the annual awards luncheon.
To paraphrase Bob Dylan, times they were a-changing.
But I still loved my job and thrived on bringing community news to the readers.
But my time also was approaching.
In 2019 I suffered a serious back injury at home. After a brief stay in the hospital, I returned to work. But I was forced to return to the hospital several times in a short span of time and for a short period my legs were paralyzed.
I was fired just after Christmas that year while in physical rehab and still unable to walk.
“You’re fired,” I was told via a telephone call from two editors. “It’s nothing personal Tim, but we can’t deal with the back issue anymore.”
I wasn’t even able to clean out my desk, clear my computer of letters and emails or say goodbye to my friends.
But I did get a box.
I was devastated after being fired. But I understood.
I wonder how much cash the company saved by eliminating my $ 13-an-hour salary. Evidently not enough.
This recent announcement by Gannett is truly the end of an era.
And while the closures are breaking my heart due to emotional ties, other folks will be affected as well.
It might be hard for younger readers to imagine, but a segment of the population still enjoys reading a newspaper.
Not only that, family members enjoy cutting out smiling pictures of little Bobby or Suzy receiving awards for academics, accolades for scouting, and accomplishments for volunteering.
I’m sure decades worth of articles have been kept on refrigerator doors, folded in scrapbooks, or mailed to out-of-town relatives.
Remember, not everyone uses a computer or owns a smartphone.
One example is my mom, Betty Troglen, who still likes to read the local newspaper when she can afford one.
I explained to her what my former employer is going to do.
“That’s silly,” she said. “People want to see their family in the paper.”
I agree mom.
Rest in peace sweet papers and thank you for my career which continues with NordoniaHills.News. And thank you, dear papers, for all the friends I made at the company and in the communities.
I’m glad that I can still cover community news with NordoniaHills.News. I’ve only been with the paper for a short time but the other reporters and I can cover the types of stories I covered with the weeklies.
And as Gannett makes funeral preparations for the six, NordoniaHills.News, which began 7.5 years ago as an online-only publication, now serves the area well, I’m proud that my new paper has become not only the local paper but the go-to place for local news and happenings. And even though it started out all online at least “they” have a print edition that can be found in stores all over town.
If anyone is interested in starting a newspaper(s) to take the place of any of those which will soon cease to publish, please contact us. We would be willing to help resurrect a soon-to-be-dead publication. Contact Julie via email: juliedaloiso@gmail.com
And why not?
It will soon be Easter, a time when resurrection is celebrated.
