Claremont Loses Newspaper

The biggest news in today’s Eagle Times, wasn’t penned by a reporter, but by publisher, Harvey Hill. Under the headline Eagle Time to Cease Publication, Hill wrote that his family had spent millions to support operating losses, but couldn’t do so any longer. Hill said immediate closure was his only alternative. He ended by saying that his family had been blessed by great co-workers and that it was for them that his family felt the most pain. Hill was less emotive when he poked his head out of a loading dock today at Eagle Times headquarters.

“I have nothing, nothing to say.”

But when confronted by an angry Eagle Times reader demanding an immediate subscription refund, Hill did indicate hope that a bankruptcy trustee would sort things out.

“He will contact you.”

“How will they contact us? They don’t know us.”

“We will see that...He will begin coming in to see all out records. And he will be contacting everybody.”

And that probably wasn’t the only tough interaction Hill faced today. A few minutes earlier, a pair of state labor inspectors emerged from a side door. They didn’t look, or sound very cheery. And what they learned, they weren’t sharing.

“Questions you might have, you’ll have to contact the department.”

And rest assured there are a lot of questions……..

“Nobody knew about it. We’re all here at our normal routine. It’s too bad to lose another customer.”

Ryder Williams is a trucker, one of several to arrive at the Eagle times this morning bearing printing supplies now destined for points unknown

“I won’t deliver. Any pick-ups come in?”

20 yards away Randy Yanish, the paper’s general manager was unloading computers on from the paper’s satellite offices.

“The only reason why I’m here today is out of pocket to do this job is because the owners going to pay us out of his pocket to do this little job for him and I need the money.”

Yanish was second in command at the eagle times, and says he only leaded the papers closure 20 minutes before the rank and file staff.

“It’s tough, I don’t think anyone saw this coming. It’s tough on all of us, a lot of families. I mean this country was founded on newspapers, and you know the industry in flux anyway, but we had some good publications here, I just don’t think they were managed the way they should have been. And hopefully someone will come along and pick us back up. “

-Do you know what you are going to do?

“Hopefully survive. One more weeks pay.”

City officials says they will do what they can to aid the state in any efforts to help the paper’s 66 fulltime and 29 part-time workers. Mary Walter is Claremont’s finance director. She says the city used the EagleTimes to post all its public notices, and with good reason -- besides community TV, it’s pretty much the only place Claremont residents could get local information.

“Other than that there’s not really an outlet. We have a couple of local papers that are starting up, one’s and e-mail online only; another one is the Claremont city post, they just delivered something this morning. But other than that there is little that people will be able to find on local news or sports, or the kids or classified, so I don’t know what the answer to that is.”

The publisher of the Valley News says that paper plan to step up its coverage of goings on in Claremont. More news on what went wrong with the Claremont Eagle Times is likely to emerge during its bankruptcy proceedings. Filings in that show the Eagle Publications had assets of between 1 and 10 million dollars, and liabilities of between 1 and 10 million dollars. The filings also show the company has more than 200 creditors.