RIVER FALLS, Wis. — For the first time since before the Civil War, the people of River Falls will no longer have a newspaper with their town's name on the front.
Starting with next week's edition, the weekly River Falls Journal will merge with newspapers in New Richmond and Hudson to become a regional paper known as the Star-Observer. RiverTown Multimedia announced the merger -- and two other mergers between Wisconsin and Minnesota papers -- on Monday as it moves strategically toward a digital subscription model with lower printing costs.
The loss of the Journal name in River Falls, a mainstay in town since 1857, has created an identity crisis in this community of 15,000 as small newspapers across the country continue to grapple with declining advertising revenue.
"It's going to be really sad not to have our own newspaper anymore," said Leah Gabin, the owner of Freeman Drug on S. Main Street. Her store, which dates back to 1872, is now the oldest institution in town along with the school district. "The paper defines what happened in the town and all the sudden it's gonna be all mixed up with everybody else."
Dan Geister, a local historian who claims to have read part of every Journal edition ever printed, said the newspaper is by far the most reliable source of information for written history in River Falls.
But now, the city's story will have to be written as a part of the Star-Observer.
"It's a lot of disappointment and sadness," Geister said. "It doesn't feel quite as hometown.
Even the Journal offices on Prairie Drive are gone; they've been converted into a Kids Club for the summer (the school district is temporarily operating the old Journal building, but eventually the police department will move into the building).
Neal Ronquist, the publisher of RiverTown Multimedia, declined comment but said in the published announcement that the merger will allow the company to deliver "more pages, more news content, more advertising content in print than we have been." RiverTown is a Division of Fargo-based Forum Communications Company, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The mergers reflect a larger trend in local journalism — particularly in small weeklies like the Journal. According to research at the University of North Carolina, roughly 1,800 newspapers in the United States have vanished since 2004, creating so-called "news deserts" in some undeserved communities.
"I'm not ready to say we have a 'news desert' here," University of Wisconsin-River Falls journalism professor Andris Straumanis said, "but I think the climate is changing."
In the case of the RiverTown papers, the company believes the new "digital-first" subscription model could help them reinvest in local reporting. The balance between digital subscriptions and retaining local readers is a delicate one across the United States, particularly in Western Wisconsin, where a large portion of the older population prefers a physical newspaper.
"I think that will be the test in this case to see how they can survive," Straumanis said, "if they can find the correct formula of driving digital subscriptions and keeping the readership base. I think there's a lot of challenges."
With the Journal name now gone from River Falls, the oldest institution in town is now Freeman Drug, dating back to 1872.
Leah Gabin isn't celebrating that fact.
"We're all going to be merged into one another," Gabin said, "And they're not going to tell us what's really happening just in our town."