Newspaper survival

[Dan.Strassberg]

Sometime in the early or mid sixties, my late wife and I visited
Renovo PA (that's with an R; the Chinese PC company is with an L),
then with a population of ~3000, allegedly the smallest-population
community east of the Mississippi with a daily newspaper. Renovo is in
the mountains of north-central PA, not all that far from Williamsport
PA and either Elmira or Corning NY. The reason Renovo had a daily
paper back then was that the ONLY radio reception in the town was AM
skywave at night. I think it was in what the FCC calls a "white" zone.
Now, of course, there must be more than a handful of nominally local
radio signals, including a bunch of (mostly religious) translators.
The Williamsport AM stations probably arrived in Renovo a few years
after our visit. Most were Class IVs, and they probably became audible
there once they were allowed 1 kW-D.  I imagine there must now be more
than 100 channels of cable TV, so the daily paper must be long gone.

I did not get to look at the Renovo paper, which is too bad. A copy
would be a great collector's item. Renovo had no local advertiser base
to support that newspaper; the only way the paper could have survived
would have been from advertising by stores in the surrounding
communities to which Renovo people had to have traveled to do their
shopping.

I would be foolish to try to attribute Renovo's clearly impovrished
circumstances at the time of our visit to its lack of local radio, but
it is clear that the newpaper was not enough of a force to change the
town's circumstances. I wish I had taken pictures, but I did not even
do that. Renovo's only industry appeared to be the railroad that
passed through it. It was a place that history seemed to have
completely passed by. In the early 60s, it was living in the late 20s
or more likely, in the depression-era early '30s. It may not be a
bustling place today, but I imagine it has changed profoundly. I'd
actually be interested in going back--or at least in seeing pictures
of how the place has changed.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>
To: <kvahey@comcast.net>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: Newspaper survival


> kvahey@comcast.net wrote:
>> Sid
>>
>> Absolutely in fact the last pure evening paper in the US just
>> folded a
>> couple of months ago in Cincinnati. Their circulation had dropped
>> to
>> 20,000.
>
> Not disputing Kevin's general thrust, but as sad as the demise of
> the Cincy Post was, it wasn't quite the end of the afternoon paper.
> In fact, another one, the Albuquerque Tribune, just breathed its
> last a week ago.
>
> There are still a few others left standing, under joint operating
> agreements (the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel in Indiana, for instance,
> or the Tucson Citizen) or as co-owned sister stations to morning
> dailies (the Wheeling, West Virginia News-Register).
>
> I'm pretty sure there are no longer any communities that have a
> morning daily and a competing afternoon daily under entirely
> separate ownership. In most such cases, the former afternoon daily
> has gone to morning publication at some point (i.e. the Honolulu
> Star-Bulletin).
>
> s