The "New" Old Courier Returns

Looking north from the Courier Gazette, probably in the 50s.
Picture from Tim Sullivan of the Rockland History Facebook Page.

Drawing of the Courier Gazette office at 465 Main Street,

 occupied from 1924-1966. Photo from South Village Story.

This Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ if we are Christian. On April 5 we are also very lucky to have a second chance to resurrect our beloved Courier Gazette. On that date we will welcome back familiar papers: The Courier Gazette, The Camden Herald, and The Republican Journal.

The Courier Gazette has a long history in our area, since the mid to late 1800s. The paper was brought to us first as The Limerock Gazette. I will bring you a brief history at the end of this blog.

The big question on all our minds, however: Will this new “old” Courier survive the onslaught of other media outlets available to the public? Let’s explore the recent downfall of newspapers in our country to answer that question.

According to some media experts, the newspaper is either dead or dying. I found a story called “The Year the Newspaper Died” on www.businessinsider.com.

This story names 2009 as the death of many newspapers in this country. The statistics they quote are:

·         105 newspapers went out of business

·         10,000 jobs were lost

·         Print ad sales fell 30% in the first quarter.

·         23 of the 25 biggest newspapers had circulation declines

The reasons stated are:

·         The collapse of the economy resulted in lower advertising budgets

·         Advertising went to blogs and similar media

·         Craigslist took the classified

·         eHarmony took the personals

·         Google took the tiny ads for weird products

Besides all that, the bigger department stores today usually have their own web site, making it easy to put their ads online where they have a bigger audience as well as making it easy to shop from home. Even stores that don’t exist in your area are now accessible to you via the internet. It has become necessary these days to have a website for your business no matter how big it is. I can order lobsters to be shipped to me the next day from Jesse’s Market in the South End any time I want them by simply going to their site and ordering them.

The hardest hit newspaper conglomerates are the Gannett Co. Inc., GateHouse Media Inc., The Sun-Times Media Group, and The Journal Register Co. These organizations closed 61 papers in 2009. Many of the smaller papers either died altogether or were swallowed up by bigger papers.

So I ask you, can our long history of newspapers in our area survive all this doom and gloom?

Other papers have come and gone since the Courier appeared in our lives. They include the Rockland Opinion, a rival of The Courier Gazette for more than 40 years; People’s Cause, a weekly in the 1890s; Rockland Daily Star, one of the few attempts to produce a daily paper in the area; and Knox Messenger, in the 1920s. Before these papers appeared we only had papers with religious overtones such as the Christian Intelligence.

In 1846, the Lime Rock Gazette began its long career in the Shore Village. Lewis Richardson and John Porter published the paper by setting type by hand and printing on a hand-operated Washington press in the Frye Block on Main Street.

The paper changed hands several times until in 1882, William Oliver Fuller, Jr., who was publisher of the Rockland Courier since his graduation from high school in 1874, took over. In 1851 the Lime Rock Gazette was renamed Rockland Gazette. The Rockland Gazette and the Rockland Courier were then merged and re-named The Courier Gazette.

You can see a more detailed history of the paper in Shore Village Story, pages 183-187, which is where I got the information for this blog. The book is available from the Rockland Historical Society or at the Reading Corner.

For other stories I’ve written on the subject see my archives for May 2011, “The Courier Company Picnic,” and “…and then the web broke.” As you all know by now, my family, including myself, has a long association with the old Courier. I am anxious to see what the “new” Courier will look like. Please welcome back and support your new Courier.

Also keep an eye on Tim Sullivan’s “Rockland History” Facebook page for more information and pictures of the old Courier.

Thanks for listening.