Hacker News Reader

Comment by lkbm | Hacker News Reader

USA Today also owns a huge number of local papers -- possibly most. The main local papers in the three last places I've lived (Austin TX, South Bend IN, Asheville NC area) were all USA Today Co.-owned. (Used to be called Gannett.)

It's not dying. Or, at least, it's doing better than anyone else.

View on HN

My local USA Today-owned paper moved from a giant historic building (800 people when I worked there), to a new much smaller office (about 150 people at that point), to announcing they're moving to a coworking space.

They're dying, it's just a slow bleed-out.

I decided to spot check a few, including places like Portland and Seattle, and it seems like private ownership by a family for the last century is pretty common. And isn't the main paper in Austin the Austin American-Statesman? That's the Hearst family. Though looking a little deeper, they were owned by Gannett until last year.

Yes for big cities, but there are very very few independent local papers in less populated areas, for example: https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/with-a-new-media-conglo...

Also the Oregonian (big Portland paper) and the Seattle Times (big Seattle paper) are not locally owned anymore.

The Seattle Times is still owned by the Blethen family (who have owned it since 1896).

Ah confused it with the Tacoma News Tribune

It’s interesting. Growing up, my small town of ~4000 had a local newspaper. It doesn’t exist anymore, as of 5-10 years ago. I think many less populated areas did have some independent journalism until very recently.

But at the same time there is also an online newsletter/blog/sort of newspaper that started maybe 15-20 years ago. It has maybe one or two employees but it’s mostly about high school sports and local events.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com