Pacific Northwest newspapers have seen a steady erosion in advertising and print circulation for more than 15 years now, but this year has been especially ugly. So thank you for your support of local journalism. More than ever, we need subscriptions to continue to provide robust community news about Clark County and Southwest Washington.

Like our peers, we’re having a tough year financially. We’ve revised our numbers downward a couple of times, and made some corresponding spending cuts. We decided it wasn’t prudent to fill two open reporter positions, and this week we decided to drop Washington Post opinion columns, including George Will. This is mild considering what is happening elsewhere.

One of the biggest jolts is in Everett, north of Seattle, where The Herald has long been a quality paper. It was owned by a Canadian company called Black Press Media through a subsidiary, Sound Publishing, which has more than 40 papers in Washington and Alaska. Last year, Black Press ran into financial difficulty. In March, it was taken over by a Mississippi outfit, Carpenter Media Group, and some investors.

Carpenter broke out the saw last week, laying off a dozen of The Herald’s newsroom employees. That’s roughly half the staff. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Carpenter announced another 50 layoffs at other Sound Publishing newspapers.

As you might expect, there’s considerable acrimony and blame. But everyone (except, oddly, the publisher) agrees The Herald’s voice will be greatly diminished. As Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said, “Without The Herald, we will not have reliable news for our residents about our community.”

Pamplin sells papers

If the Carpenter Media name sounds familiar, it’s because it just purchased Pamplin Media Group, publisher of the weekly Portland Tribune and two dozen more community newspapers, mostly in the Portland area. As with the Sound Publishing purchase, this will give Carpenter a ring of newspapers around a legacy metro paper — in this case, The Oregonian. (Disclosure: The Columbian provides printing and some other production services to Pamplin, but our news operations are not aligned.)

After the Pamplin sale was announced but before the Sound Publishing layoffs, University of Oregon journalism professor Brent Walth was interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Think Out Loud” program. Here’s Walth’s take when host Dave Miller asked him about how Carpenter may operate its newly acquired Pamplin properties:

“It’s a great question. … I think we might be looking at cessation of some of the print publications for at least some of the properties going forward. I know there’s a commitment or a desire to keep the reporting staff at Pamplin Media Group as much at full capacity as possible. … Hopefully that’s still the case here.”

Nonetheless, I am sure Pamplin news staffers are nervous, especially when they look at Sound Publishing.

EO Media for sale

If you believe in local media and, as the old joke goes, have a large fortune that you’d like to turn into a small fortune, another homespun newspaper chain is for sale. EO Media Group — whose properties include The Astorian, the Bend Bulletin and the Capital Press farm newspaper — recently announced that due to rising costs and diminishing returns, it was putting itself up for sale.

As part of the announcement, EO also announced it would discontinue five small-town newspapers in Eastern Oregon and instead focus on online news and widening the distribution of the Pendleton-based East Oregonian. Layoffs were involved, of course.

It’s a terrible year for Northwest media. I can only hope the bad news is near its end.

Craig Brown is The Columbian’s editor. 360-735-4514 or craig.brown@columbian.com