Rural Virginia county loses its only newspaper

Clarke County, Virginia, population 14,000, has had a newspaper since 1869. Not now. The Clarke Courier, circulation 2,200, has become the Old Dominion's first paid-circulation newspaper to close during the recession, and many mourn its passing -- including Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher:

"The only paper that really cared about Clarke County is gone. Will life in Clarke be diminished as a result? People aren't exactly broken up about the paper's death. It's just another sign of the times. But it says here that over time, each lost strand of community adds up to more disconnected lives. The web makes up for that kind of lost connection in many ways -- smaller groups of neighbors may find each other through community bulletin boards and listservs, and certainly people organize themselves and find one another online by interests, political activities and hobbies. But a service that listens to people and tells them about each other's lives where they live has been an essential organizing concept in how we live for nearly half a millennium. We'll certainly figure out a way to reinvent that connection, probably better than it's ever existed before. We just haven't gotten it done yet; we're too busy taking apart the old jalopy." (Census Bureau map)

Washingtonian magazine National Editor Harry Jaffee, who has a home in Clarke County, sounded a similar theme in a column in the paper's final edition: "Communities live and die on connections and relationships. We visit at our schools, cross paths at the Post Office, break bread together at churches and clubs. And we read the local paper. It tells us who starred at the high school track meet, who lived a good life and passed on, why we are getting a new high school — or not." Jaffee concluded, "Who will keep us connected? . . . Perhaps an enterprising band of reporters and businessmen can resurrect our local paper. Why not?"

The Courier left its door open a crack. Its own obituary was headlined "Final edition," but it began, "This edition of The Clarke Courier will be its last until further notice." (Emphasis added.) The fourth paragraph read, "At this time, economic conditions in Clarke County do not allow the newspaper to continue publishing and serving the citizens of Clarke County."

Editor Cynthia Cather Burton (in photo by Ginger Perry, looking at May 21 edition) wrote, "For the past two weeks, we’ve been writing The Courier’s obituary, waiting for it to die. Grief is the only word to describe what we feel. ... Now, it’s time to plow ahead. Who knows what the till will turn up."

The last edition included a story by reporter Layla Wilder about the decline of downtown businesses. " The Courier’s struggle to survive the recession and changing times mirrors the struggle of Main Street over the years," she wrote. "Downtown now has more than 11,000 square feet of empty space. Some people, especially longtime merchants, blame the erosion of the town’s business district on chain stores in neighboring jurisdictions."

But Wilder also reported that some new businesses were opening. Fisher noted that, and offered this analysis: "Ad revenue, the lifeblood of journalism, dried up, both because of the recession and because of the massive shift of advertisers' dollars, interest and energy from the old standby of print papers to a hodgepodge of other outlets, both online and not (mostly to nowhere, actually--this is the great unwritten story of the dismantling of the news industry, the concomitant decline of the advertising and public relations businesses)." (Read more)

The Courier's parent, the daily Winchester Star, says it will keep covering the adjoining county, "But the editors and reporters of a community weekly — particularly when they live in the area they cover — hear rumors of news in their day-to-day lives," former editor Pam Lettie noted in a column in the final edition. "That connectedness ties journalists to their stories and the community."