This morning I learned that the Chico News & Review newspaper (in Chico, CA), a weekly alternative publication since the 1970s that provided stellar community news coverage was ending its long run of producing a printed product. A letter to the community from its editor says the newspaper is going completely digital. The hesitation in his written words is palpable as to whether that’s a completely sure thing.
What caught my eye were comments that Covid-19 hit them so hard the newspaper was not able to recover enough advertising revenue to keep printing. And advertising revenue is the name of the game in newspapers. It led me to think how hard community newspapers all over the nation got whacked by Covid, too, adding to the existing decline in support. Covid likely struck many a death blow and/or forced sales of community newspapers to opportunist media scavengers like the hedge fund, Alden Capital.
The weekly Chico News & Review was a thriving concern in 1980 when I did a five-month stint as news editor at the Chico Enterprise-Record. I refer to those five months as the longest five years of my life. As liberal, progressive and environmentally conscious as the weekly News & Review was, the daily Enterprise-Record was uber-conservative, hopelessly right-wing all around and unable to stomach even minimal protection of the environment.
It wasn’t the news staff of the Enterprise-Record that was so epically Neanderthal, it was the publisher with whom I argued daily until I took my leave, got a master’s degree and became a journalism prof at Chico State University, literally a few blocks north of the newspaper. The Enterprise-Record staff were all solid professionals and good people for whom I fought a Quixotic battle against the publisher. Ironically, the daily Enterprise-Record is now owned by the vultures at Alden Capital.
The loss of the print edition of the Chico News & Review was perhaps predictable. It takes a lot of money to actually print a newspaper. In the case of the News & Review, the printed product was given away free - previously a good business model. Many newspapers charge a subscription fee which, by the way, rarely cover the actual cost of printing and distribution. But the subscription fee helps.
I’m not writing off the Chico News & Review or its push into digital. But the print edition collapse is a somber reminder how important it is for all of us to push back hard against encroaching news deserts everywhere. Somehow, we need to ensure basic journalism coverage exists to keep every community informed, politicians held accountable and environmental declines on the front burner of concern. City councils, school boards, public agencies and everywhere imaginable needs journalists acting as watchdogs, offering timely reporting to the public.
As lacking as news coverage is now in many communities, I shudder to imagine what it could be like without it entirely.
Get that new digital-only Chico News & Review up and running quick! And please start covering the community like an annoyingly itchy wool blanket. The people of Chico deserve to know what’s going on. And you’re just the ones to do it.