The New Castle News
===================

The paper comes up as Kiriakou's own instance of a general collapse. He and his co-host had been discussing AI summaries cutting news-site traffic by as much as half, the long decline of newspapers since circulation peaked in 1960, and the emergence of whole regions with no local reporting, "a golden age for political corruption," as Rall puts it. 

The price

Kiriakou describes the New Castle News as "my own little local newspaper," one he tries to scan every day, and says it "became so expensive." 

He gives the comparison that makes the figure sting. He spends something like fifty dollars a year on the New York Post and sixty on the Times, just for access. The New Castle News, which, he notes, does not have a Wednesday edition or a Sunday edition, is $250 a year. "I can't afford $250 a year for a sixteen-page local newspaper." 

The consequence

Kiriakou states the loop plainly: "And as a result, they can't afford to hire journalists." 

He describes what is left. The editor is about 28 years old. The paper covers the local county fair, the farm show, who grew the biggest pumpkin, and what the local churches are doing.  Kiriakou does not present this as contemptible, it is simply the whole of what a paper can still do at that size.

His verdict on the region is unqualified: "you're right, it's a news desert. There's no other way to describe it." 

The regional papers

Asked implicitly what the alternative is, Kiriakou walks through it and finds it exhausted. For regional news one can subscribe to one of the Pittsburgh papers. But the Youngstown Vindicator is gone, and he stresses that Youngstown "was a big city," 110,000 or 120,000 people. "It's done. Its paper's done." 

He has already noted, in the same exchange, that Canton, Ohio lost its newspaper a couple of years earlier.  The area Kiriakou is describing is the one he comes from, and the papers he is counting are the ones that covered it.

See also

- The Greek community of Warren, Ohio
- The Guardian smear series
- Gary Webb and Kill the Messenger
