ER The Eureka Reporter to cease
TS Eureka Reporter to cease operations
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The Arcata Eye on the Demise of The Eureka Reporter
Eureka Reporter
Some of our readers seem to think we should be happy at the demise of the Eureka Reporter.
Well, we aren’t. We seriously aren’t. It’s a sobering loss for us all.
Rob Arkley took an astoundingly high-minded approach to newspapering that the local “progressive” haters who reflexively condemn anything this fine Humboldt family does never gave him or his fine staff credit for.
The ER was a handsome, full-featured paper from which one could become very well informed and form virtually any opinion – liberal, conservative or otherwise. While it lacked the comparative journalistic depth of the Times-Standard, it was only getting started when the cruel economics of the newspaper industry took their final toll.
It takes time for a paper to mature, and newspapers have to reinvent themselves with each edition. It’s hard to realize your potential and properly serve readers with sensitive, in-depth coverage when you’re constantly putting out the fires of spot news and trying to get enough advertising to pay the printer, the rent, the phone bill, the payroll, taxes and so on and endlessly on.
In its time, The ER employed writers and photographers who created genuine journalistic wealth for readers to enjoy and learn from, for competing papers to try and outdo with their own original work and for bloggers to rip off while looking down their anonymous noses at “old media.”
For now, the demise of the Eureka Reporter is a reminder that newspapers can and do go away – even ones backed by people with means, which we aren’t. The brutal reality is that given the limited pool of local advertising dollars, the ER’s untimely end may help us stagger forward a bit longer. Call our advertising department at (707) 826-7535 if you’d like us to carry on and maybe even get closer to fulfilling our mission.
