Death of twin papers prompts 'group hug' in N.Y.

In the creative destruction that marks the news business today, "at least as vexing as the future of brand-name publications is the question of who, if anyone, can provide news in rural and exurban communities where, even in the best of times, the most informed people are often the ones with police scanners." So writes Peter Applebome of The New York Times in reporting the death of twin rural newspapers in the Catskill Mountains of southern New York.

"The Phoenicia Times and The Olive Press were lively, intensely local and culturally sophisticated biweeklies, nine and seven years old," Applebome reports. (By "biweekly" he means every other week. The papers were mailed free to every postal patron.) Phoenicia is "a tiny hamlet of about 400 people within Shandaken, a rural town of about 3,400 year-round and 7,000 in the summer, spread over 120 square miles. (Top of MapQuest image shows route from Phonecia [A] to Olive [B], pop. 4,600, both in Ulster County. Click image for larger version.)

"In an area where the daily Kingston Freeman historically tilted right, the papers tilted left, with raucous letters pages and coverage critical of the area’s biggest development plan at Belleayre Mountain," Applebome writes. "But in a bad economy, the papers’ publisher, Brian Powers, and their editor, Paul Smart, found themselves skating too close to the edge of viability. A plea for financial help from readers in August was not enough to keep the doors open. Mr. Powers still thinks he had the right model . . . and is hoping to raise money to revive the notion on a larger scale. Having something tangible like print sent to every residence is more appealing to advertisers than the wispy notion of who might read what online, he argued."

The need for local news was demonstrated by what Applebome calls a "group hug" among the papers' staff and readers, started with a post by Lissa Harris, editor of a new website for the region, Watershed Post. For a PDF of the first 16 pages of the Times' final edition, with a story about its demise and other, related material, go here; for the Olive Press, here.