5 rural Arizona newspapers closed abruptly — including the longest-running in state history

Normally on a Monday, we’d be hearing from Arizona Republic editorial page editor Elvia Díaz on The Show. But it has been a rough week for local journalism in our state.

The Arizona Republic announced a round of buyouts, and some of their most seasoned journalists took it — including Elvia Díaz. The move comes after its parent company, Gannett, announced it will also no longer print the paper in our state.

And last week we got the news that five rural papers are closing down in Arizona as well. The announcement came from News Media Corp., which owns dozens of newspapers across the Midwest and the West. It is closing 14 papers overall from South Dakota to Illinois. The five newspapers closing here in Arizona include the Arizona Silver Belt, Copper Corridor and Copper Country News in Globe; and the Lake Powell Chronicle and Gateway to Canyon Country in Page

All the newspapers closed without warning, an abrupt ending for some that have been around since before Arizona was a state. To hear more about a few of them, The Show sat down with our resident historian and an archivist, Sativa Peterson.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Sativa, we’re seeing some news deserts right here in the desert, it sounds like. Who’s going to be most affected.

SATIVA PETERSON: Yeah, Lauren. So there are five community newspapers, and they really do focus on these two areas, Globe and Page. So two very different areas of our state.

GILGER: OK, so tell us about a few of these papers that have been around for a very long time.

PETERSON: Oh, I would love to. I’d love to take a moment to recognize the contribution of a couple of these papers. So let’s start with the Arizona Silver Belt. Ah, the Arizona Silver Belt. It began publishing in May of 1878. So it was almost 150 years in publication. I think it’s 147 to be exact.

And to put that into context, 1878 is the same year that Thomas Edison patents the phonograph. So as long as you can think about recorded sound in that way, that’s as long as the Arizona Silver Belt has been publishing a paper in Arizona. Sometimes it was a weekly, sometimes it was a daily, but it is the longest continuously running paper in Arizona.

GILGER: And now no more.

PETERSON: And now no more. It makes me really sad. But it also had this wonderfully long run. And in that spirit, I kind of wanted to go back and look at the beginnings of the paper. So, that’s what I did. I went and found the second issue ever published. And let’s just time travel to 1878 for a second.

It must have been incredibly hard to even get a paper printed and put out into the world. It was laborious, it was a challenge. You had to set each individual piece of type into a tray. That must have taken hours. And then just to get the paper, like the pulp paper that was used or the ink — because at that time Globe was basically this isolated mining town in very rugged terrain.

So just to get the supplies there and back. So knowing how difficult it would have been to even just get the paper published, I went back, and there’s this wonderful article that’s in the second issue of the paper and it’s written by one of the two co-editors. The editors were a man, Hackney, and the other one was Moorhead.

And so Hackney describes “on Thursday last, after the issue of our first paper,” they’re exhausted, they head to bed. And Hackney is describing lying there thinking about the girl he left behind. [LAUGHS] You know, and he hears sounds at the door. So he wakes Morehead, his co-editor, and they strike a light.

And there’s a man there, Lawyer Goodwin and another man, Mr. Barnes, and they have brought along alcohol and stringed instruments, which I’m imagining is a guitar. And so then drinking and singing ensue. [LAUGHS] And so they worked incredibly hard to get the paper out and then went to bed and then got a little sloshed, it sounds like. [LAUGHS]

And so that is the spirit in which this very early paper started. But it matured quickly. Moorhead doesn’t stay with the paper long, but Hackney goes on to really advocate. Globe was, you know, struggling to build connections to the outside world, and the paper did that. It advocated for things like roads and telegraph connection and railroad connection. Really foundational stuff. And Hackney even in the end, donates the first plot of land that becomes Globe’s first church.

GILGER: So, these were influential people at the time, and still today it sounds like they have a legacy.

PETERSON: Yeah, a very long legacy.

News Media Corporation

GILGER: All right, so tell us about what paper will be going down in history in the Page area.

PETERSON: All right, well, so if the Arizona Silver Belt is an example of sort of a 19th century newspaper, the Lake Powell Chronicle up in page is a really good example of a paper from the 20th century. So, if we fast forward, it’s first printed in 1965, and it chronicles this new town. I mean, Page didn’t even exist until 1957. It started to become a community for dam construction workers who were working on the Glen Canyon Dam. But it was just a gathering of trailers and building supplies and the raw desert. So the town of Page starts to grow. And nine years later, as Glen Canyon Dam is nearing completion, so that is when the paper is launched.

And what really struck me about the Lake Powell Chronicle is right from the very beginning how they sort of see themselves as a paper for all of the surrounding areas. In the very first issue, it says "a newspaper of all citizens of the area, including the Canyonlands, Monument Valley, the hometown newspaper, including Kayenta, Tuba City, Cameron, Gray Mountain."

So, they really did see themselves as serving, you know, beyond just the small community of Page that was trying to grow.

GILGER: Including on the reservation, it sounds like.

PETERSON: Including on the reservation. And they had a column, the Navajo News, which was in every single paper. And then also, just to go back to an editorial point of view here, I think this just describes kind of the spirit in which the paper was launched. This was the first editorial in 1965, and it says, "We hope you like the Lake Powell Chronicle.

It is a time for sacrifice, a time of true do it yourselfers, empire builders and hard work. Truly and in reality, if you fly over the vast, fantastically beautiful empire of colorful canyons filling with blue Colorado river water and see the unlimited potential, it cannot help but arise within the most conservative person a pioneer spirit to build and to accomplish."

And so this paper closed on Aug. 6 of this year, and it launched in August of 1965. So, it was five days short of its 60th anniversary. And when I think about that, it makes me a little sad, but I do think of the scope of this paper, how Glen Canyon Dam was very controversial when it was going to be built.

It was going to have significant environmental and ecological impacts, but at the same time, it was going to provide water storage and hydroelectric power. And I think for the people that had stayed in Page and were trying to build this community, it tells that whole story.

GILGER: Yeah, absolutely. So Sativa, after kind of researching and digging into the histories of these two papers, what do you think it means to these local communities that these very local and small community papers are no longer there?

PETERSON: Oh, boy. You know, I think that community newspapers have really been the backbone of Arizona and of America for a long time. And, of course, Americans are getting their news in different ways now. And I’m sure that’s going to continue. We really aren’t getting them from print media and more and more in digital.

But I think that these papers just contain so many stories and that I think, for me, they hold dreams as well as the realities.