By paulgillin | July 10, 2009 - 8:02 am - Posted in Facebook

EagleTimesThe 175-year-old Claremont, N.H. Eagle Times publishes its last issue today after filing for bankruptcy. Publisher Harvey Hill informed the 100-plus staffers only yesterday of the shutdown of the near-daily (the morning paper doesn’t publish on Saturday) as well as three companion weekly and advertiser papers serving surrounding areas. Employees get their last paycheck next week and health insurance through the end of the month.

The Eagle Times website (circ. about 8,000)  has no news of the impending closure. New England Cable News does, however. It has the video clip below, including interviews with staffers choking back tears but otherwise showing little outrage. One man mourns the fact that the immediacy of the move gave the staff no chance to say goodbye to readers. The publisher filed for Chapter 7  bankruptcy, which mandates immediate closure of the business. (via Martin Langeveld)

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under Facebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Comments

  1. July 11, 2009 @ 5:33 pm



    […] heading off to Vietnam.  The paper was a part of small town life and it feels weird knowing that the Eagle is gone and I wonder what, if anything will take its place to cover the news about those small communities […]

  2. July 12, 2009 @ 11:31 am



    […] Questions were raised as to whether or not newspapers have been making money, another publication shut down, a second start-up was created from the ashes of the Rocky Mountain News and the news was preempted […]

  3. July 14, 2009 @ 4:18 pm



    As noted on my blog, WCAX-TeeVee in Burlington, VT interviewed one longtime Eagle Times reader who heard about it on the 11 PM news. Apparently most of the employees were also blindsided by the last minute announcement.

    Which leads to my proposal for a new revenue source for shrinking mainstream media, at least TeeVee. Instead of using email or a phone call to avoid eye contact with the employee getting screwed, have the local TeeVee station run a special feature called “Job Watch” during the 11 PM news that would announce any sudden shutdowns while the company CEO is out of town. For a fee the CEO could use the news media in its most traditional role: the bringer of bad news.

    Stan

    Posted by Stan Spire
  4. August 6, 2009 @ 11:29 pm



    […] chance to report for a newspaper even if they wanted to when they grow up — you know, with slow, painful death of newspapers. For that matter, such a chance may not exist for me, […]

  5. August 9, 2009 @ 8:01 pm