The week my local paper in rural Kansas just stopped printing without warning

Back in 2019, the Pratt Tribune vanished overnight with no notice to subscribers, and I only found out because the county clerk's office lost all the public notices that had to run for two weeks straight, which made me wonder how many other small town newspapers get quietly killed without anyone hearing about it - has anyone else's local news source just disappeared like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

burns.ruby3d ago

That "vanished overnight" part really hit home for me. Same thing happened with the Hays Daily News back in 2021, just stopped showing up on my porch one morning with zero explanation, not even a note in the mailbox. I spent two weeks calling around to figure out if it was just my delivery or the whole paper, and turns out the publisher had shut it down without telling anyone.

barbara_taylor832d ago

Right? Just poof, gone like a fart in the wind. I swear newspaper companies think a polite heads-up is optional or something. They probably just figured everyone would eventually notice the stack of unread papers wasn't piling up anymore. Real classy way to treat people who've been paying you for years. Guess they ran out of free rubber bands to throw on the driveway.