CNHI shuts down two southern Illinois newspapers

[writingump]

Wave goodbye to the Mt. Vernon Register-News and the McLeansboro Times-Leader. The Register-News published today for the final time and the Times-Leader publishes for the last time on Thursday. The Times-Leader existed for 163 years.
A dozen employees are affected.
Included in the link below: The usual corporate mumbo-jumbo about how "we tried every way we could to keep these papers viable."
<
Mt. Vernon Register-News, McLeansboro Times-Leader closing

 

[I Should Coco]

A quick check of Wikipedia shows Mount Vernon has 15,000 people and its county has 38,000. There's a large tire-making factory there and it's just off Interstate 57.

Lots of rural areas in Illinois are worse off than that, yet they can't support a three-day-a-week newspaper. Or even keep the website going. Ugh.

I hope all employees who lost their jobs find something better than the newspaper business.

 

[Bronco77]

Very sad. Went to college about 45 minutes from Mount Vernon and McLeansboro (the town in which former NBA player and coach Jerry Sloan grew up), and those were solid small-town papers back in the day. I'm not sure any newspaper will cover those communities now. Carbondale, Ill., and Evansville, Ind., are the nearest places with sizable papers, but neither really covered Mount Vernon and McLeansboro even when times were better.

 

[TarHeelMan]

A shame....seems like an area that size should be able to support a local paper

 

[LanceyHoward]

Very sad. Went to college about 45 minutes from Mount Vernon and McLeansboro (the town in which former NBA player and coach Jerry Sloan grew up), and those were solid small-town papers back in the day. I'm not sure any newspaper will cover those communities now. Carbondale, Ill., and Evansville, Ind., are the nearest places with sizable papers, but neither really covered Mount Vernon and McLeansboro even when times were better.

This is a CNHI shop. CNHI also owns Effingham, which is an hour away, I would have thought the plan would be to transfer the subscriber base from Mt. Vernon to Effingham, It seems strange not to try to combine these papers into a larger one. But then I would have expected the article to mention something about it and the Mt. Vernon website would not have been taken down so I guess not.

 

[BartonK]

Passed through Mt. Vernon many times... it's where I-57 and I-64 meet (so the main crossroads for Nashville-St. Louis, Louisville-St. Louis, and Memphis-Chicago traffic). Lots of hotels and restaurants, gas stations to cater to travellers. Wouldn't guess any of those businesses have any interest in advertising in the local paper. There's also a small, dying mall in the middle of town, but I'd imagine it'll close fairly soon.
Who'll print the legal notices now?

 

[I Should Coco]

Re: legal notices. Several states have introduced legislation allowing those to be posted online, and no longer requiring them to be printed in newspapers.

Arguments range from "no one sees them in newspapers" to "let's kick the media while it's down" (at least in my state).

 

[LanceyHoward]

Passed through Mt. Vernon many times... it's where I-57 and I-64 meet (so the main crossroads for Nashville-St. Louis, Louisville-St. Louis, and Memphis-Chicago traffic). Lots of hotels and restaurants, gas stations to cater to travellers. Wouldn't guess any of those businesses have any interest in advertising in the local paper. There's also a small, dying mall in the middle of town, but I'd imagine it'll close fairly soon.
Who'll print the legal notices now?

The Kmart is closing in Mt. Vernon. I wonder if the loss of that revenue pushed the paper over the edge. Given the number of Sears, K-Marts and Penny's closing I wonder closing I wonder how many more papers will be dragged down.

 

[swingline]

Carbondale, Ill., and Evansville, Ind., are the nearest places with sizable papers, but neither really covered Mount Vernon and McLeansboro even when times were better.

Those places are a long way from Mount Vernon. Evansville is a lot closer to Owensboro, Ky., than it is to Mount Vernon, and it didn't cover O'boro when I was there.