'Residents said they didn't realize how much they depended on the paper until it was gone,' AP reports from news desert

The final story remains posted on the paper's website.

When a rural newspaper closes, it leaves more than an empty building; it leaves an indelible hole where a sense of community and shared information used to thrive. McDowell County, West Virginia, pop. 19,000, is one of those places.

The Welch News, the only newspaper and "The Spirit of McDowell County," closed in March, and the town's residents miss it, reports Leah Willingham of The Associated Press. "Residents suddenly have no way of knowing what's going on at public meetings, which are not televised, nor are minutes or recordings posted online. Even basic tasks, like finding out about church happenings, have become challenging. The paper printed pages of religious events and directories every week, and that hasn't been replaced."

More than 2,000 newspapers have closed or disappeared in mergers since 2005, and most have been weeklies, which in rural areas provide profound connections, with their sharing presence like a heartbeat and their closings like deaths. In mountainous McDowell County, "Residents live miles apart in hollers connected by winding roads and no interstate access, leaving people isolated. Cell and internet service is inconsistent, or nonexistent, and there are no locally based radio or television stations," Willingham reports. "Residents said they didn't realize how much they depended on the paper until it was gone." The county is the state's poorest, "with some of the lowest graduation and life expectancy rates in the nation."

McDowell County (Wikipedia)

Sarah Hall, the first Black prosecutor elected in McDowell County in the 1980s, said it's tragic when any community loses its newspaper. But for communities like hers, it's detrimental." Hall told Willingham: "We're in a unique situation because our community is unique. We have no other substantial way of communicating." Willingham wriotes, "It bothers Hall not to know about decisions county commissioners are making with taxpayer money. She misses the legal notices the paper published informing residents about developments like utility rate increases. With the school year set to start, she's worried families won't know about a ministry program in early August providing free school supplies," Willingham explains. "Local crises, like the desperately needed upgrade of water and sewer systems, are going unreported. And there is no one to keep disinformation in check, like when the newspaper published a series of stories that dispelled the rumors of election tampering at local precincts during last year's May primaries."

Once the self-proclaimed "Heart of the Nation's Coal Bin," the Cumberland Mountains county has "lost big-box stores, schools, thousands of jobs and people. But it still had its newspaper — one that tracked government spending, published elections, spelling-bee and basketball-game results and spreads with color photos and biographies of every member of the graduating class," Willingham reports. When the paper closed, no local service replaced it, leaving residents to rely on unverified social-media sources or coverage from "national outlets that focus on the poverty rate, opioid use, infrastructure woes and the declining coal industry," Willingham adds. "The paper was a vital platform for residents to tell their story from their perspective — a lifeline for a community that's often been misrepresented and misunderstood."