Sunday, April 12, 2009

More bad local newspaper news ...

The Hooksett Banner and the Goffstown News, weekly newspapers which have been serving their communities for about 50 years each, will move to every other week editions starting this week.
In front page and opinion page comments, the staff announced that due to a drop in advertising revenue, the newspapers would be making the change. Historically, they have been weeklies. The Hooksett edition of the newspaper this week was still 20 pages and chock full of local information - but only had five bylined stories.
To compensate, the staff will publish updates online and they are encouraging readers to sign up to the company's Facebook pages to get updates and to update them with notices.
These changes come just four months after the newspaper announced that it was merging The Bow Times and the Goffstown News together: ["Two local media notes ..."].
The newspaper's parent company is the Union Leader. So, I can't imagine that they would be doing this unless they really, really had to.
One other media note: WMUR-TV is reporting that the Hippo Press' parent company has bought a bi-monthly newspaper in York, Maine: ["NH Company Buys Maine Newspaper"]. Gotta wonder what the strategy is there.

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