A Maryland city has lost its local newspaper, 41 years after it started publishing.
The Bowie-Blade News published its final edition on Thursday.
The weekly paper, which covered the Prince George’s County city, was part of Tribune Publishing, a chain of newspapers bought by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital two months ago. An Alden representative told Bowie officials that the paper was shutting down because of a lack of local advertisers.
The Baltimore Sun, the Carroll County Times and the Capital Gazette were among the local papers acquired by the controversial investor, which Vanity Fair Magazine has accused of squeezing the last profits out of newspapers and decimating journalism in cities all over the country. As part of the $633 million purchase of Tribune, Alden also got the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News.
Alden isn’t completely abandoning Bowie. The Capital Gazette in Annapolis will maintain a Bowie and Prince George’s County news section on its website.
But in a column on that site, Bowie’s communications director says not having a newspaper dedicated to covering the town is a big loss. She said the town “is losing something important…we will no longer have a community paper connecting us.”
With the Tribune purchase, Alden now owns about 200 newspapers across the country; it’s now the second-largest newspaper publisher in the U.S. measured by circulation.
