Another newspaper bites the dust as the economy and the internet continue to take its toll on the print media. When will the industry of “old time” newspaper men wake up to the changing landscape? Novato residents and business owners were saddened by the surprising announcement by the city’s weekly newspaper, the Novato Advance, that it will cease publishing after Sept. 24 due to financial losses.

 

After 86 years of uninterrupted operation, it seemed like the paper would always be there to cover high school sports and chronicle the happenings at City Hall reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

“It was a neighborhood paper. You knew what the kids were doing in school and all that kind of stuff,” said Rose Ann Graziano, who has lived in Novato for more than 30 years, as she worked at Alice Becker’s clothing shop downtown.

 

Novato’s city clerk for 23 years, Shirley Gremmels, said the paper faithfully attended Tuesday night City Council meetings and covered community events larger papers didn’t follow. “On Wednesday mornings, we always looked to see what we did Tuesday nights,” she said.

 

The Advance, like other papers nationwide, has been struggling with declining advertising revenue and readership due to competition from other sources, particularly the Internet. Tough economic times combined with a relatively small number of retailers in Novato to support advertising revenue made the paper’s finances go from bad to worse.

 

The paper’s publisher, Paul Hutcheson, said he gathered the staff Tuesday night to deliver the bad news, something that he had both been trying to prepare for – as well as avoid – by quietly searching for a potential buyer. The Advance is owned by Scripps Enterprises Inc., a privately held company in Charlottesville, Va.

 

Read more here: Novato residents lose a trusted weekly friend

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/11/BUGN12SCBN.DTL