The Glorious Art of Killing a Newspaper

There is a way to kill a newspaper so slow, so polite, and so exquisitely stupid that even the corpse will thank you. I have seen it done, and I have had the misfortune of watching it carried out with all the ceremony of a Sunday sermon and none of the sense.

I speak of the Comstock Chronicle, that noble and long-suffering rag of the Virginia City hills, which recently gave up the ghost after a four-year wheeze under my reporting and less than a year under the tender mercies of a committee of philanthropists. I worked four years and four months to make the thing a success, and it took the Comstock Foundation barely nine months to drive it into the ground.

They called it progress. I called it murder.

Now, when I say “murder,” I do not mean the kind with blood, bullets, and police reports. It was the genteel variety, death by improvement. The Foundation, in its wisdom, decided to fix what wasn’t broke, and like most fixers of sound machinery, they began by removing all the working parts.

The modern disease of “strategic oversight” found its way into our little office like a mold in the breadbox. Soon we had more emails than readers, more mission statements than pages, and more pictures than stories.

I would have gladly stayed on and fought the good fight, but providence and dumb luck spared me as I got dismissed before the final collapse, and thus my name, though soiled by ink, was not dragged through the mud of their egregious failure. There is, I find, a curious satisfaction in watching a disaster you once predicted come true, like seeing an old enemy trip over his own shoelaces, regrettable, but instructive.

The Comstock Foundation, an assemblage of erudite opportunists if ever there was one, came with smiles, slogans, and PowerPoint presentations. They spoke of “community engagement,” “brand evolution,” and “the digital frontier.” It all sounded splendid, like someone promising to teach an old dog to sing opera.

Their first act of benevolence was to appoint a man who knew everything about everything except the thing he was to do. He visited our office, nodded gravely at the Xerox printer, and declared that the Chronicle must “modernize or die.”

The man, like an undertaker, had a vested interest in the dying option. He implemented metrics by altering the format, removing news articles, reducing the page count, adding more photographs, hiring an expensive off-site printing company, and then doubling the price.

In my day, the only metric that mattered was whether the town was cheering your headline or cussing you out for it. Now the paper had to measure “click-through engagement” and “audience growth trajectories.” I confess I never found a way to wrap fish in a trajectory, and a click-through cannot line a birdcage, but no one wanted to hear that.

When the fixed edition hit the stands, it looked like a committee of raccoons had designed it. The subscribers, God bless their stubborn, analog souls, couldn’t find the news, so they unsubscribe.

By the fourth and fifth months, the Foundation’s enthusiasm for the publication began to cool.

“The numbers are disappointing,” they said, but the numbers were always disappointing when compared to faith.

I remember the email that ended it all for me. It began with “Hi Tom,” which is always how bad news starts when it comes from someone who hasn’t the courage to face you.

“The article amount should be $100 flat rate. Please revise and we’ll get it paid.”

That was from the new editor. It was like saying, “In the interest of fairness, you should accept less.”

Now, fairness is a noble concept when evenly applied, but in the newspaper trade, it often means “we ran out of money and you’re the easiest one to short.”

“No, it is $160 a week,” I returned, without receiving a response until the following day.

The final note arrived the next day.

“Tom, I would have loved to have a deeper discussion with you about this, but per your social media posts you seem to have made up your mind. I see no need to go further. Please return your key.”

Obviously, and most humorously, the editor was following social media more than his emails. I printed that message, framed it, and hung it above my desk as a warning to future me to never trust a man who ends a terse letter with “best regards.”

In less than nine months, the paper has folded. The editor announced that there would be “no printed edition this week,” which in newspaper language is akin to a doctor saying “the patient is resting comfortably” after a funeral.

The announcement was a masterpiece of euphemisms: “evolution,” “transitioning to a sustainable model,” “new opportunities in online engagement.” Nowhere did he mention that the Foundation had run out of patience, readers, and money, in that order.

The staff, a collection of saints and masochists, stayed for a while, fueled by coffee, civic pride, and no pay. But when the presses stop, morale follows, because the hum of machinery has a way of convincing you that purpose exists, and without it, silence grows like moss.

A few optimists clung to the online edition, updating it now and then with stories no one read, because no one knew where to find them. The Internet, you see, is a vast desert of half-buried ambitions.

When the editor resigned, he did so with the tone of a man announcing the sinking of the Titanic, while assuring the passengers they could still swim or get a refund.

“We have taken steps to ensure the Chronicle’s continuation in whatever capacity our community should support.”

Translation: “We’re broke, but the website still loads.”

Virginia City has seen more burials than baptisms in its time. It buried the Comstock Lode, the silver boom, and the age of the telegraph. Each time, it mourned a little, then shrugged and poured another drink.

When word spread that the Chronicle was gone, the town took the news with the same weary amusement it gives to every death, “Well, that’s a shame. Who’s buying the next round?”

I don’t blame them. A newspaper, like a preacher or a dentist, is only missed when it’s needed.

But I’ll tell you something: the day after the last issue hit the stands, the air in that town felt heavier. The post office seemed quieter, the coffee shops duller, the bar conversations shorter. A paper doesn’t just report a community; it keeps it awake.

Without it, rumors get lazy and truths go unchallenged. People start believing whatever headline finds them first, and the loudest fool becomes the town crier.

It is an irony of progress that, in our zeal to digitize everything, we have managed to make our world less permanent. An old newspaper, yellowed with age, still exists; a deleted website never did.

I have learned, after four decades of writing, that there are only three ways to destroy a newspaper. The first is to neglect it, stop caring, stop paying, and stop reading until it dies of sheer loneliness.

The second is to starve it, cut costs, delay payments, and heap praise upon volunteers until they finally quit from exhaustion. And the third, most efficient method, is to improve it, fill it with nothing,” and within a year you’ll have nothing left but a museum exhibit.

The Foundation managed to achieve all three simultaneously, a feat deserving of historical recognition, if not admiration. And in less than a year.

But I hold no grudge. Truly. I am too old to be bitter and too amused to be sad. A man must learn to laugh at his own obituaries, or else he’ll never stop crying.

If Mark Twain were here, he’d likely say that newspapers and men share the same fate: they begin with bold headlines, end in small print, and spend most of their lives correcting their errors. The Comstock Chronicle may be dead, but I am pleased to report that it died honorably, not from lack of trying, but from an excess of good intentions.

And as for me? Well, I lasted longer than Mark Twain.