Put the paper “to bed”, for good
What can you do, when the news is that there will be no more news, at least concerning your community? This afternoon, in one of those stories that leaves one feeling confused, a swap of newspapers in Upper Canada put an end to close to a century and a half of laying out the stories and putting it all to bed.
Without naming the communities involved (although one of them certainly inspired Leacock to laughter), the local newspaper ceased to exist today. Probably. There’s still a check of the smell test by the competition board. Realistically, all future news will be available only by reading the big city broadsheet. And believe me, when the big city controls the story list, there will be no more small town stories.
Out with investigation of the city council, or the local schools, or the mess in the park. In with little of local concern. Let’s face it; those that wanted the ads from the malls down south were already picking up the big city paper along with their local tabloid. Now only the metropolitan news will be heard.
My parents have been receiving the daily (OK six days a week) paper for better than fifty years. I never noticed a race to get the other papers, because they weren’t relevant to life in a small town. From now on, the obituaries and the sales on ground round will have to be studied by another manner. I read that paper, online, for the last decade. I’m very sorry to hear that my diversion ends with not even a whimper.
