The last press run in Buffalo makes me sad. And that's more than nostalgia.
I feel this personally and it also has a deeper cost
I worked at The Buffalo News for most of my adult life. I arrived as a summer intern, stayed for three decades, and left after almost 13 years as top editor. Most of the tens of thousands of times that I walked into the paper’s headquarters, I didn’t come through the public-facing lobby but instead took the back stairs. That route took me through the part of the building that was essentially a factory.
For many hours each day, The News manufactured the daily newspaper on its German-made KBA presses — state-of-the-art in 2004 when the paper, then owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, bought them to replace outdated ones never meant to print in color. The paper that came off these new presses was crisp and downright beautiful, especially after we did a complete redesign that won national awards.
As I took my route to the newsroom, I could smell the ink, sometimes hear the roar of the machinery, and feel the grooves of the wooden floors in the room where advertising circulars were inserted. Sometimes I exchanged a few words with the composing-room workers or pressmen — guys who might have hailed from my nearby hometown of Lackawanna.
About five years into my employment, I married another News reporter. And a few years later — while nine months pregnant — I had the singular experience of telling the pressroom foreman to, yes, STOP THE PRESSES! (Within 24 hours, I went into labor and gave birth to our second child, making it an eventful day all around.)
Two weeks ago, those presses made their last run. The newspaper, which Buffett sold in 2020 to Lee Enterprises, a chain, is now being printed in Cleveland as a cost-saving measure. About 160 employees lost their jobs. Deadlines now come much earlier, to the detriment of readers. The newsroom — still full of talent but much smaller than the 200-strong one that I first joined and later led — had already relocated to a Buffalo office building. Print circulation has tanked, as the local non-profit Investigative Post recently documented, and digital circulation hasn’t taken off. The paper’s journalism still matters immensely.
Chief photographer Derek Gee chronicled the last press run, creating this published gallery. With thanks to ranking Buffalo News editors Sheila Rayam and Margaret Kenny, I share a few of Derek’s poignant images here.
I’ve written a lot of about the decline of local news, particularly newspapers, and the subsequent growth of “news deserts.” As Washington Post media columnist, I once included the horrifying statistic that two newspapers a week are going out of business in America. My 2020 book, Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy, examines the decline’s causes and effects, and looks for solutions.
I believe deeply in the importance of local journalism. Its loss takes a heavy toll on civic engagement, on the ability to hold the powerful to account, and on the way a community knits itself together. The last press run in Buffalo is a part of that story.
Thanks to all subscribers here for caring about these issues, and to everyone who supports journalism in any form.
I relocated from Buffalo to Charlottesville, Va., and for years maintained a digital subscription to The Buffalo News. As a former journalist (and a paperboy for the News during my childhood), I did it mainly out of a sense of solidarity and understanding what would happen to my hometown with the loss of its only major newspaper. Since Lee Enterprises came in, the product quality dropped and the cost increased to the point that I could no longer justify it and canceled my subscription. Ironically, the Charlottesville Daily Progress is also a Lee product and the mirror issues there led to my canceling that subscription, too. I donate regularly to a local non-profit news site but I just don't know how this all ends. People don't understand what it means to have a local newspaper covering their community until it's gone. We're seeing this story play out over and over again across the country and I'm at a loss to see what can be done to stem this tide. Anyway, thanks for this piece. It makes me very sad, though.
I’m also sad about the decline of locally produced papers and the increasing pressure on reporters that follows (relocated reporters now have tighter deadlines). This letter gives much appreciated background and a personal connection that helps make it “real”. Thank you.