Calif. weekly, 1 of 4 in county, goes to e-mails and texts; publisher says print no longer viable for it

Many rural newspapers have had trouble adapting to the Internet, but one Northern California weekly is going digital-only without a website. The Pioneer Press of Siskiyou County, Calif., which borders Oregon, will now publish only via e-mail and text messaging, Jamie Genter of the Siskiyou Daily News reports. Editor-Publisher Daniel Webster said he and two staffers will continue to provide news to subscribers via email and text message for a fee of $2 per month. "I believe the news we produce is worth 50 cents a week – give or take a quarter or two given the week’s headlines and opinions," Webster said in a letter to readers published in the final print edition of the newspaper.

Webster told Genter the response has been overwhelmingly supportive, with many readers already sending him their e-mail addresses for the new service. "My subscribers and my readers have been probably the most loyal of any media readers in Siskiyou County," Webster said. "I have intensely loyal subscribers. They have, en masse, stuck with us and signed up. It’s been a real encouraging couple of days." In addition to the Pioneer Press and the Siskiyou Daily News, Siskiyou County (Wikipedia map) has three other weekly newspapers: the Dunsmuir News, the Mount Shasta Herald and the Weed Press.

Webster filed for bankruptcy over a year ago. Webster said he is currently working on a unnamed news project which he will announce at a later date. "This wasn’t a matter of a bank issue," he told Genter. "The bankruptcy was hoping to save the Pioneer Press and get ‘The Project’ launched. The timing was wise to cut the print edition now. It’s a choice that every single newspaper will have to make at some point in time. It is no longer a financially viable business. For some it is right now, but at some point it won’t be." In his final print edition Webster described the project as a "worldwide news project" that will bring people their news by phone, television and computers. The Pioneer Press was founded in 1972 and termed itself the "official newspaper of the State of Jefferson." (Read more)