Independent folds after 36-year run: Newspaper is shut by troubled publisher Journal Register Co.

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HILLSDALE, Feb 06, 2009 (Albany Times Union - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- JRCO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Today's 36-page edition of The Independent will contain a healthy dose of local news, which is just what readers of the twice-weekly newspaper expect.

But the paper also will include an unexpected announcement: The edition is its last.

Journal Register Co., owner of The Independent, told staffers on Thursday it would shutter the paper, putting about 20 people out of work and leaving 7,000 subscribers in Columbia and Rensselaer counties with less to read.

Journal Register, owner of more than 300 weekly and daily publications, including The Record in Troy and The Saratogian in Saratoga Springs, is struggling. Burdened with debt, its stock price has plunged, and the company in recent months has moved to close or sell several newspapers in Connecticut and its home state of Pennsylvania.

This also is a troublesome period for much traditional media, with newspapers and television stations alike dealing with declines in advertising and shifts to Internet-based media.

"Newspapers are still making money, but not like they used to," said Diane Kennedy, president of the New York Newspaper Publishers Association, an Albany-based trade group for daily newspapers.

Indeed, Journal Register in a statement said The Independent had "fallen victim to the bad economy that has impacted the industry, the region and the nation."

But smaller, more rural publications like The Independent are widely believed to be navigating in safer waters, relative to their bigger counterparts.

And The Independent, founded in 1973, had seemed strong.

"As a reader, it seemed healthy, both in terms of its advertising and its editorial coverage," said Tony Jones of Ghent.

But Jones was more than an ordinary reader: He and his wife, Vicky Simons, owned and published The Independent before selling to Journal Register in 2001.

"I'm saddened in the sense that my wife and I put a lot of our lives into The Independent for 15 years," Jones said Thursday. "And I think it's an important community institution."

The editorial strength of The Independent was evidenced by this week's announcement that the paper's editor, Parry Teasdale, had won a national award for editorial writing.

Teasdale joined The Independent in 2000. On Thursday, he said he and others at the newspaper have followed the difficulties faced by both media outlets and Journal Register.

"We are aware of what's happening in the newspaper industry, so (the shutdown) is no surprise in that sense," he said. "But we had no advance notice of it whatsoever."

The Independent's coverage area fluxed as the years passed. It first centered on Copake and Hillsdale, still the home of its editorial offices.

But responsibilities grew to include all of Columbia County, and then Rensselaer County cities and towns such as Schodack, Nassau, East Greenbush and Rensselaer.

Yet the paper's focus always was relentlessly local, Teasdale said.

"I'm really honored to have been part of this enterprise," he added. "It was, and is, a good community newspaper."

Chris Churchill can be reached at 454-5442 or by e-mail at cchurchill@timesunion.com.

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