GateHouse Media, the parent company of The Girard Press and The Morning Sun, announced Tuesday that it is closing The Press.

The March 25 edition will be the last of the publication.

“The decision to close the newspaper was not an easy one,” said Stephen Wade, editor and publisher of both papers. He noted that economic challenges have overwhelmed the newspaper’s ability to continue printing weekly.

The Morning Sun, with a circulation that overlaps much of The Press’, will continue to serve the area.

GateHouse blames the bad economy, but I note that the company’s entire business stratgey has always been based on buying up every single newspaper in a region, and then eliminating redundant costs. Overlapping circulation? Yeah like that was going to last long.

It must be tiring to be 100 percent right, all the time, especially when it prevents you from being able to process the fact that someone else admitted a mistake and apologized.

Hat tip: Emerge.

That’s it, my last WHOI newscast, maybe my last 10p.m. ever.

Oh, boy. I didn’t watch WHOI today. Does anyone know what was said?

UPDATE: Good news for Tim, from his Twitter page:

@PeoriaPundit I am moving to myrtle beach,sc. To be the anchor at WPDE. The boom was not lowered.

Congrats to Tim.

I say again: The Los Angeles Times’ Website is now paying for itself. In other words, people are buying enough ads on the Web to cover the costs of putting it on the Web. And the amount on online ads sold each year continues to grow, while ads on dead treas continues to drop.

Oh, we’re not at the point where newspap3ers can sell their printing presses for scrap iron and switch to a business model centered on selling news to readers rather than owning local printing press monopolies, and the door to door distribution of half-day-old news.

So, I expect to get chewed out for recommending some cat blogging.

Heh.

Copies of the book will be available.

Note: It would be great if Peoria bloggers attend.

Freedom of the Press is really in danger folks. I mean really in danger. Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! has been arrested today while covering the RNC convention and the corresponding protests. A number of senior DN! producers have also been detained. The program – in its 12th year is a go-to resource for those of us who want the news that MSM refuses to cover in depth.
This is how they quell dissent, clampdown on the free flow of information and make an example out of those who dare to speak truth to power. Call who you need to call, make your voices heard.
THIS CANNOT STAND!

Right.

So, here’s what Mashable is reporting:

Over the weekend, a number of bloggers and the New York Times rose to defend what they termed as a number of bloggers and podcasters who were arrested in Minneapolis. Podcasting News called it “a pre-emptive attempt to stifle protest and independent media coverage.” The truth is a little bit different from the story presented there and at BoingBoing, Salon and a dozen other blogs.

Snip

This time around, though, law enforcement appears partially justified in their pre-emptive raids on at least four houses where self-proclaimed anarchists and anti-authoritarians were housed. While some of them might have had personal blog or even blogs dedicated to politics, their goal was not primarily to document, but (according to their organization’s website) to help “all anarchists and anti-authoritarians, all radicals and rabble-rousers … crash the convention” and blockade downtown so as to “disrupt traffic to the convention.”

I encourage politically citizens — regardless of their politics — to also blog about their activities. But if those activities include civil disobedience, then they ought to expect to pay the price. When Henry David Thoreau, the guy who literally wrote the book on civil disobedience, went to jail for refusing to pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War, he expected to go to jail. He didn’t claim that being a journalist was a get-out-of-jail free card.

If a blogger is covering one of these group’s activities, that’s journalism, no matter how sympathetic the blogger is to the cause. But if that blogger is a member of the group and a planner of these activities, he or she is a participant and ought to go to jail with the rest of them.

And here is the irony that’s going to be lost on these people. Their “protests” are designed to disrupt the convention, thus preventing the GOP from exercising their right to assemble. Why am I not surprised? The far left will TELL you they are for freedom of speech. They ACT, however, as if the only rights they cherish are their own.

UPDATE: I had a Twitter chat with the blogger I mentioned. She’s not nearly the bluenose that this post might otherwise suggest.