After years of debt-ridden operations, Village Net Media owner Richard Anderson announced the suspension of operations effective March 9.
Anderson’s decision eliminated jobs for 56 employees, shuttered The Village Soup website, four newspapers and the monthly Scene magazine, and for the moment, left Knox County without a paid circulation newspaper for the first time in more than 100 years.
In a posting on the Village Soup website Friday, Anderson announced all company functions would cease immediately save for the activity necessary to complete the closure process.
On March 12, Reade Brower, founder and president of The Free Press, a free, Rockland-based, Midcoast weekly, signed a letter of intent to purchase the remaining assets of Village Net Media.
Those assets include the Courier Gazette, the Camden Herald, the Republican Journal, Capital Weekly, Bar Harbor Times, and all Village Soup assets. Brower said he expects the sale to be finalized within days and expects to have newspapers back on the street, at least in Rockland and Camden, as early as next week.
In a statement on the Free Press website March 11, Brower said he was exploring the best way to proceed forward.
“We consider it our responsibility as a community newspaper to figure out a way to fill the void left by the Village Soup both in its news to the community and in helping as many of their former employees as possible.”
“It wasn’t a choice so much as it was the sense of responsibility,” Brower said March 13. “We had to step up and put the lights back on as best we can.”
Brower said he has met with many people on the Village Soup staff and hopes to put out a paper in the next 7-10 days. Brower said production dates would not be finalized prior to The Lincoln County News press deadline Wednesday morning, but he anticipated more information would be available in his own publication this week.
He added he hopes to return Village Net Media’s attention to community journalism.
“If it inspires the market I think it helps all of us,” Brower said. “We are going backwards not forwards in terms of trying to emulate what print has been good at for the last 100 years.”
