Saving Winsted’s paper

Last week brought the news that the Winsted Citizen, a monthly newspaper with a goal to become a weekly and started by Winsted’s own Ralph Nader, was throwing in the towel. It had produced nine issues starting in February. That was Monday. By Wednesday, it became a rescue story. American Business Media LLC, a Simsbury-based national media company, would acquire the Citizen newspaper.

The new owner publishes seven magazines across the country, largely focused on the banking and mortgage fields, numerous email newsletters and manages an events business as well as providing other services in the communications domain. 

We celebrate the news that the Winsted community will continue to be served. (See story on here.) 

The Lakeville Journal knows about the challenges facing local journalism. A little more than six years ago, in August 2017,  The Journal announced that it was folding its own Winsted newspaper — The Winsted Journal — into The Lakeville Journal. The decision came after more than 20 years of separate publication that began in 1996. 

At the time, The Lakeville Journal reported: “Change is never easy…however, there has not been enough support from the Winsted area to sustain continued publication.”

That news report from 2017 is another reminder of the chill across today’s newspaper landscape. Veteran journalist Andy Thibault, who launched the Citizen with Nader, echoed that reality again last week when he noted that the operation never recovered from a shortfall in funding from almost its start as a nonprofit, called the Connecticut News Consortium.

We have reported several times about the death knell sounding for newspapers across the United States. We have described the so-called news deserts, where  residents in more than half of America’s counties now have little or no news coverage. And some say it’s different coverage when a town has its own newspaper, compared to having a daily come in to cover an event.

According to a recent study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the rate of newspaper closures has increased to an average of 2.5 per week from a rate of two last year.

Thanks to our own readers and supporters, The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News survive today to serve the Northwest Corner and Dutchess County.

 Most newspapers that lose a paper don’t get a replacement. Winsted won’t be one of them! 

CEO, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Vincent Valvo of American Business Media has a strong journalistic track record. He has served on the board of directors of the Connecticut chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and was president of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information. In making the announcement, Valvo said that he has been cheering on the creation of the Winsted Citizen from the beginning. 

Waterbury’s family-owned Republican-American covers Winsted, and so does the Hearst-owned  Register-Citizen in Torrington. 

Now, once again, we can look forward to Winsted’s future with a newspaper.