Source: https://www.grandforksherald.com/community/crookston-daily-times-puts-out-its-final-edition
CROOKSTON, Minn. — The closure of a rural community’s 140-year-old newspaper is the result of lack of staff, according to its interim editor and the ownership company’s CEO.
The Crookston Times, founded in 1885, will publish its last edition Friday, Feb. 7. Interim Editor Jeff Gulley said the newspaper’s final publication will feature a note from the publisher, CherryRoad Media CEO Jeremy Gulban.
“It’s sad, it really is,” he said. “I like the community. I wasn’t there very often, but there’s some good people there, and I feel bad for them that they’ve lost their paper, because when we bought it, it was a good paper, a really good paper. But that’s the way it goes.”
The Times posted the closing announcement on its Facebook page Thursday, Feb. 6, thanking customers and the community for working with it. The newspaper was acquired by CherryRoad Media alongside six other Minnesota newspapers Jan. 1, 2022. At the time, there were two editorial employees, but since they left in early 2023, the paper has struggled to find employees, even freelancers.
The Times also had the Crookston Valley Shopper, which was a free advertising piece that went out to the community.
CherryRoad and the Times tried to set up a community engagement liaison, Gulban said, to engage with businesses and find stories, but it didn’t lead to any additional subscribers or revenue. Most recently, the City of Crookston chose to move its legal notices from the Times to the Thief River Falls shopper, he said.
About two weeks ago, the company looked at the state of things and decided to close.
“At that point, we kind of looked at all this and said, ‘We’re not really proud of the product we’re putting out here anyway. We’re not having anybody local, (and) we’re losing all the advertising,’ ” he said. “ ‘It’s pretty clear we’re not serving a purpose, so we should probably stop trying to do this.’ ”
There was still news coming in, though. Locals submitted content to the paper, Gulban said.
“We’ve had local content in that paper without me writing any stories, just sent in by the community,” he said. “They supported the paper from that realm. You need somebody local, you need a face for the paper. But people were invested. It was a good try with what we had.”
Even with content, the paper couldn’t find anyone to work there, and Gulban said he’s disappointed that the Times had to close. He said he hopes others see the closure and look at their own local newspapers.
“It really depends on if people in the community are going to step up to work at and support local newspapers. If there’s not, there’s not much you can do to keep one going,” he said. “I think it’s important that people understand the story and what happened here and, hopefully, other communities will learn from it and keep supporting their newspapers.”
