End of a news era with Kent, Litchfield papers closing

It was with sadness that this newspaper last week reported the demise of The Kent Good Times Dispatch and The Litchfield Enquirer, as well as other weekly newspapers owned by The Journal Register Company in our region. While these newspapers were our competition, the people who wrote and edited them were also our colleagues, pounding away at the same business as we at The Lake-ville Journal Company do. The difference was they were under the auspices of a crumbling corporate media giant. The Journal Register purchased swaths of venerable newspapers in Connecticut over the past decade and more, among them the 56-year-old Kent GTD and the 150-plus-year-old Litchfield Enquirer.

While it may seem these now-defunct newspapers had simply outlived their welcome in their communities, the reality is that the business model followed by The Journal Register is a failing one. This company, first out of New Jersey and now Pennsylvania, bought up more than 200 newspapers in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, as well as Rhode Island (now sold off), when the papers were solid business investments and profitable. They took the steps of slashing news staff and changing the relationship the communities had with their newspapers. The concept of newspapers as providing a necessary public service to the towns they cover was not part of their roll-up process of creating clusters of redundant publications. It was only the dedicated individual journalists who worked there who kept the papers going as long as they did in that corporate climate.

    The town of Kent will miss its newspaper, we predict, and will remember their town paper as a grassroots publication that brought good news, and interesting and valuable news, to its population. The Lakeville Journal is committed to continuing to cover Kent, as we have for decades, now with Shaw Israel Izikson reporting. Not only is it important that town government and events be covered, but it’s especially critical in these tough economic times that Region One news and the impact of its budgetary decisions be brought to the citizens in those towns affected, including Kent.

    The Lakeville Journal newspapers and our Web site, tcextra.com, are locally owned and operated, with our corporate office in downtown Lakeville. Readers who would like to see the operation are welcome to visit our location at 33 Bissell St. Come in and meet the crew that covers your local news. Our goal is to be here for you, informing and entertaining our readers and our neighbors, to increase awareness of our multifaceted area and to help make this region an even better place in which to live.