Amidst the national (global) decline of print journalism, the closing of the Suncook Valley Sun, a free weekly based in Pittsfield, isn’t a big deal. It had no reporters and depended on submissions from readers, either columns or letters. They fell into categories: good news about clubs and local people – even the obits were good news in the sense that they celebrated local lives – and discussion about local politics. The discussion got heated at times but by the standards of the internet it was incredibly civilized.
In a world awash in bad news the Suncook Valley Sun was a pleasant escape. But like all print publications it has lost so much advertising to online advertising, made worse by the demise of local stores for whom the local weekly was a major outlet, that it had to fold. I have a story about it in today’s Monitor: Read it here.
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