What became of your local newspaper?

Community power displayed in buildings

I was a teenager when I first worked in a newsroom, not as a journalist but as something we half-jokingly called “darkroom girl.” Despite the title, it was a wholesome job but for the handling of chemicals to develop film, and maybe the cigarette smoke. But as I later learned, the proceeds from the cigarette machine in the back of the newsroom funded a scholarship at the journalism school two hours away. It was only scholarship I got when I was in college, thank you very much to the Butte Press Club and the dedicated smokers of the newsroom.

The newsroom of my youth was smoky, noisy, buzzing, something along the lines of orderly chaos. This was in the late 1980s, when our town had a gang of notoriously, criminally corrupt police, a 100-year-old mining industry that was collapsing to rubble, and a city full of characters and drama. I was hooked, and it was the newsroom that drew me to journalism.

The old newsroom is still there, somehow, the building not sold off for parts even though only a handful of staff work at skeletal remains of the paper. The same cannot be said for most of the physical presence of the American local newspaper industry.

I first noticed this trend on a reporting trip to the Midwest several years ago. It’s been written about elsewhere over the years, and every time I go to a new city, I look for the local newspaper building to see what became of it. Where newspapers once announced their power and presence with grand buildings in prime locations, those buildings have been sold off to the highest bidders, even when the newspaper itself remains. The newspapers’ power is receding along with the real estate.

By now, most everyone knows what has happened to local newspapers in the United States, and how their slow death is intertwined with political polarization and ongoing threats to democracy. In short, when information is nationalized, so too are politics. Turning away from local and community to national news has deeply divided and fractured our politics. It works to the advantage of people who like an irreparably divided electorate.

As local newspapers have died off, shrunk and been pushed out of prime real estate, it’s fascinating to see what takes their place. I’ve been keeping a list for a couple of years about what happens when the clout shifts in communities and what we can learn from buildings.

The second newsroom I worked in, in Missoula in the 90s, was not smoky and a bit less fun, but still thriving. The Missoulian building was sold to a luxury condo developer for millions of dollars. They haven’t turned the riverfront building into unaffordable housing just yet, but that appears to be the plan.

The Great Falls, Montana, newspaper where I worked as a cops reporter is undergoing a makeover to become a church, with a 24-hour hospitality room – for some reason -- for the police. The newspapers themselves still exist, small shadows of their former selves, trace remnants of what were once bustling buildings filled with pesky weirdos, trying to keep an eye on the business of the town. Disinformation and confusion have replaced the spaces where once we wrote about things like city council meetings and court dockets.

Obviously, this isn’t a straight line. The pandemic and remote work have emptied out and shifted the makeup of many American downtowns. But the turning away from local news and information as a cornerstone of the downtown core began years before covid, and those newspapers and their grand buildings aren’t coming back. Sorry, I also wish they were, in a form that has more inclusive and diverse staff and opinions.

For generations, local newspapers were the anchors of American communities, and they made their presence known by their buildings on main streets and prime real estate in everywhere. Cut-throat profiteering has blown many of them to bits and what’s left is being sold off and picked over to further pad the bottom line of companies that own the remaining properties. From Philly, where the magnificent tower of the Philadelphia Inquirer is now police headquarters, to Chicago, where the Sun-Times has become luxury condos, to smaller cities like Missoula and Great Falls, the buildings that grounded communities with detailed, lively, and sometimes tedious tidbits that connected residents have shifted.

Marketing copy for luxury housing that replaced a New Jersey newspaper

My question is what replaces the institutions that once were the anchors of our towns and what happens when we lose them? Who holds power in communities and who is keeping an eye on them? What arises in the space once filled by the basic work of community and accountability?

For now, let me share with you a few of the places on my list. These are former marquis newsrooms across the US and what they have been made into:

The Kansas City Star – an extravagant show of local newspaper architecture, there were calls to make it a museum of sorts, it appears to be a paper bag factory.

The Miami Herald building is now a condo and office development.

The Chicago Tribune became luxury condos.

The Bergen County (NJ) Record, Hackensack, NJ was demolished for mixed-use condos/commercial development, and developers made a deliberate choice in marketing to lean on the space’s past as a newspaper.

The old Philadelphia Inquirer – Police headquarters.

The Flint (Michigan) Journal – a farmers’ market

Arizona Daily Star (Tuscon) – sold at auction, plans unknown (not uncommon).

The Detroit Free Press – apartments and retail

The Memphis Commercial Appeal, became, for a time, a covid hospital.

Wausau (Wisconsin) Daily Herald – a mega-storage company

Newspapers that have shut down:

Green Bay Chronicle (Wisconsin) – A school for gifted kids.

The Cincinnati Post – Now the County Court of Domestic Relations.

Tampa Tribune (Florida) – demolished

Benton County Daily Record (Arkansas) – An events center owned by the Walton (Wal-Mart) family.

You get the gist. Real estate, even in a time of tumult in American downtowns, marks who matters in cities and towns. Local newspapers were the community voice and watchdog that held the power, and we’ve lost it without putting up much of a fight.