Wednesday marked a grim milestone in the Mississippi newspaper community with the closung of the 104-year-old Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland.
The paper's closure was revealed earlier this month by parent company Walls Newspaper Consultants of Alabama. The Commercial was the company's lone holding in Mississippi.
Mississippi Today interviewed newspaper publisher Diane Makamson, a 42-year employee of the Commercial, and longtime managing editor Denise Strub, while also looking at a rapidly shifting landscape for newspaper media. While the Commercial is the first newspaper to close in the state since the onslaught of the covid-19 pandemic, more than half a dozen other MPA members have recently announced cutbacks in print frequency as they move quickly to shift content and resources to digital channels.
The Clarion Ledger also looks at the passing of the Commercial and balances it with the announcement of successor newspaper to start publication the first week of May. Cleveland-based Bolivar Bullet founder Scott Coopwood, no stranger to publishing, said he was approached by several community members who urged him to move to fill the void left by the closure of the Bolivar Commercial.
We send our thanks to the Commercial's employees — present and past — for their dedicated and diligent service to the Delta and Bolivar County. We wish them nothing but improved fortunes in the time to come.
