The Seattle Sun and Star, formerly two neighborhood newspapers that began joint publication in May, closed suddenly this week. The free biweekly paper, which circulated 25,000 copies, printed its last issue July 1. Town Crier Publishing, which published the former South Seattle Star and acquired the Seattle Sun just a year ago, had hoped the papers could survive under single ownership, first as separate publications and then as one. But the cost of doing neighborhood journalism has become too expensive to be supported by local advertising, the company’s owner says.
Publisher Wallis Bolz, who founded the South Seattle Star in 2002, says the move is all about money—or a lack thereof. Small businesses, she says, aren’t as interested in advertising in community newspapers as they once were. “The old business model of getting advertisers to support journalism is over,” she says. “They don’t want to piggyback on newsprint. There are too many competing ways they can reach customers.”
The South Seattle Star was renamed the Seattle Star last year and served the area from Rainier Beach to the Central District. The Seattle Sun, started in 1997 as the Jet City Maven, served Seattle north of the Ship Canal. Bolz bought the Sun from its founders, Susan and Clayton Park.
Small in size, the two papers had an impact on local journalism. The Sun‘s James Bush, a former Seattle Weekly writer who is now an aide to King County Council member Dow Constantine, first broke the Strippergate story two years ago, for example.
Declining to elaborate about financial losses, Bolz says she recognizes that some people, especially among the former Sun‘s North Seattle readership, will think that the merger of the two papers killed the Sun. But the Sun was in a precarious position on its own, she says.
