When I tired of recycling a partially read newsprint paper, I subscribed to the PD digital edition and sent the price difference plus some more to the PD Foundation, the nonprofit associated with the PD, as I looked on the paper as important to the community as a museum or public broadcasting. Do you know what will happen to that fund? Who has control of its resources? If it is the new owners, I will stop my financial support ASAP.
Thanks Rollie for doing this story. Since our conversation I have been spreading the tale of woe, but now I have a place to point people- and hopefully to subscribe. Such a tragedy and it happened so fast. Hope you are wrong about the Sonoma Gazette- it has been fun writing for them.
most telling and scary account of what's happening across country coming to roost here. I've been reading the PD, now virtually, for all the decades we lived here. Is this greedy vulture like outfit politically inclined to give us canned by the right news? Most important: do we give up and let it happen as I suppose you understand more than any...trying to get readers to buy into and keep your papers alive...it's really grim and not to be ignored. I'll support your podcast and Seb Times. Barbara
What timing. I just wrote a piece asking if I live in a “news desert”—from my relatively cushy position in suburban Philly. Then I read your story from the front lines, and it was everything I thought.
The story you tell of Alden’s hollowing-out of the Press Democrat—staff cut by a third, skeleton crew coverage—fits exactly with what I found in Elkins Park. On paper, we’re “covered” by our big local players. But in reality? Facebook threads or bust if the road gets torn up and no one will tell us why.
I crunched some numbers, and they told the same tale: coverage that only exists if there’s an explosion. The day-to-day stuff that actually makes communities? Zoning meetings, school boards, infrastructure plans? Vanishes.
What I realized most: we are in different stages of this process. My “news drought” is not separate from the true deserts you chronicle—it’s just the quieter, more genteel cousin. This is what the hedge fund model looks like when it’s humming.
And your view as a publisher who lived through this and fought back is so important. It gave me words for what I’ve been feeling as a reader: that even in places where we should be getting good coverage, something’s gone.
Feels like this is the moment. Whether it’s the “all of the above” solution you describe or something else entirely, I think the pressure for solutions is coming.
Thanks again for just telling it like it is. It’s a tough read, but so necessary.
This is disastous, Rollie! Having subscribed to the PD for over 70 years, reading it daily (online in recent years). Had no idea this was such a sad happening. What is the best thing we can do, as retirees on limited income? Im also a paid subscriber to. Sebastopol Times and very appreciative of the job Laura is doing🤗
I’m 80 years old, a retired metallurgist that has lived through the decades of US Reaganomics.
Following WWII, the US created wealth by manufacturing goods imagined by scientists and engineers. But few people have such brains and eventually core competence was commodified by people in business schools. This was fine with the lawyers we elect to government, neoliberal and ‘conservative’. ‘Question everything’ morphed in Monitize Everything; The buildings for Bethlehem Steel were demolished and a gambling casino was built, extracting retirement funds from silly men.
Instead of creating wealth, for example, GE (an evolution of Thomas Edison) under Jack Welch made money by manipulating money.
Democrats and Republicans changed laws enabling media consolidation and eliminated the Fairness Doctrine. The destruction of local media has the support of mainstream corporate media and our politicians that for decades have extracted wealth, sort of eating the seeds.
We few that read Rollie see the symptoms but there is no Center of Disease Control for the virus that is greed and ignorance, and society has rejected inoculation.
Refresh your memory of the path of destruction we have democratically followed:
When I tired of recycling a partially read newsprint paper, I subscribed to the PD digital edition and sent the price difference plus some more to the PD Foundation, the nonprofit associated with the PD, as I looked on the paper as important to the community as a museum or public broadcasting. Do you know what will happen to that fund? Who has control of its resources? If it is the new owners, I will stop my financial support ASAP.
Thanks Rollie for doing this story. Since our conversation I have been spreading the tale of woe, but now I have a place to point people- and hopefully to subscribe. Such a tragedy and it happened so fast. Hope you are wrong about the Sonoma Gazette- it has been fun writing for them.
most telling and scary account of what's happening across country coming to roost here. I've been reading the PD, now virtually, for all the decades we lived here. Is this greedy vulture like outfit politically inclined to give us canned by the right news? Most important: do we give up and let it happen as I suppose you understand more than any...trying to get readers to buy into and keep your papers alive...it's really grim and not to be ignored. I'll support your podcast and Seb Times. Barbara
What timing. I just wrote a piece asking if I live in a “news desert”—from my relatively cushy position in suburban Philly. Then I read your story from the front lines, and it was everything I thought.
The story you tell of Alden’s hollowing-out of the Press Democrat—staff cut by a third, skeleton crew coverage—fits exactly with what I found in Elkins Park. On paper, we’re “covered” by our big local players. But in reality? Facebook threads or bust if the road gets torn up and no one will tell us why.
I crunched some numbers, and they told the same tale: coverage that only exists if there’s an explosion. The day-to-day stuff that actually makes communities? Zoning meetings, school boards, infrastructure plans? Vanishes.
What I realized most: we are in different stages of this process. My “news drought” is not separate from the true deserts you chronicle—it’s just the quieter, more genteel cousin. This is what the hedge fund model looks like when it’s humming.
And your view as a publisher who lived through this and fought back is so important. It gave me words for what I’ve been feeling as a reader: that even in places where we should be getting good coverage, something’s gone.
Feels like this is the moment. Whether it’s the “all of the above” solution you describe or something else entirely, I think the pressure for solutions is coming.
Thanks again for just telling it like it is. It’s a tough read, but so necessary.
(And if you’re curious about how it’s going in the burbs: https://yonigre.substack.com/p/do-i-live-in-a-news-desert)
This is disastous, Rollie! Having subscribed to the PD for over 70 years, reading it daily (online in recent years). Had no idea this was such a sad happening. What is the best thing we can do, as retirees on limited income? Im also a paid subscriber to. Sebastopol Times and very appreciative of the job Laura is doing🤗
Sigh…. First they came for:
I’m 80 years old, a retired metallurgist that has lived through the decades of US Reaganomics.
Following WWII, the US created wealth by manufacturing goods imagined by scientists and engineers. But few people have such brains and eventually core competence was commodified by people in business schools. This was fine with the lawyers we elect to government, neoliberal and ‘conservative’. ‘Question everything’ morphed in Monitize Everything; The buildings for Bethlehem Steel were demolished and a gambling casino was built, extracting retirement funds from silly men.
Instead of creating wealth, for example, GE (an evolution of Thomas Edison) under Jack Welch made money by manipulating money.
Democrats and Republicans changed laws enabling media consolidation and eliminated the Fairness Doctrine. The destruction of local media has the support of mainstream corporate media and our politicians that for decades have extracted wealth, sort of eating the seeds.
We few that read Rollie see the symptoms but there is no Center of Disease Control for the virus that is greed and ignorance, and society has rejected inoculation.
Refresh your memory of the path of destruction we have democratically followed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stockman