Reporter quits to start paper in town that lost one

When Journal Register Co. went into bankruptcy and closed several newspapers last year, that left communities without a newspaper of their own. One was Elizabethtown, Pa. (star on MapQuest image), population 12,000 -- big enough to support a weekly paper, figured Dan Robrish, who was in his 12th year as a reporter with The Associated Press. So he quit and became a publisher, of the Elizabethtown Advocate.

“I had long been interested in running my own newspaper,” Robrish told Victor Fiorillo of Philly Mag, who writes, "For some, investing in a 'dying' newspaper industry and moving from Rittenhouse to a 2.6-square mile borough was a crazy move, but for Robrish, it was a no-brainer." Robrish told him, “The papers with the big problems are the metropolitan dailies. You can get that information from so many sources. But here, if you want to read a professionally written news story about what the Board of Township Supervisors did on Thursday, you really don’t have much choice but to pick up the Elizabethtown Advocate, because I was the only journalist at that meeting. I am the only game in town.”

Fiorillo concludes, "Word of his endeavor has spread to other newspaperless small towns in Pennsylvania, some of whom — including neighboring Mt. Joy, where the local newspaper was similarly canned by the Journal Register — have asked him to do the same so that they can know all about their school board, the wrestling team’s tragic defeat, and, of course, the Kiwanis Club’s Annual Spaghetti Dinner." (Read more)