Andrew Gilhooley's Blog

I’m not quite sure exactly what I am trying to say in this post. It was inspired in part by an article I read in the Monterey County Weekly (apologies in advance, it has intrusive pop-up ads, unlike the print version) about the decline of local newspapers. You see, I used to work for one of the local papers it mentioned.

From 1999 to 2007, I worked for the Salinas Californian as part of their IT team and as the writer of a weekly column previewing upcoming music events. As you can see in the photograph above, the newspaper was housed in a handsome Art Deco building taking up an entire city block in downtown Salinas. The building housed all of the newspaper’s offices as well as the printing press and its supporting equipment. At the time I joined the company, around 120 people worked there, their ranks swelled to around 200 by a fleet of freelance delivery drivers.

The Californian published six days a week, Monday through Saturday, and also produced a Spanish language newspaper, El Sol, twice a week and a weekly “shopper” (reprinted stories from the week bundled with advertising inserts) delivered to non-subscribing households. In my time of working there, the company also produced a monthly local business supplement, real estate supplements in both English and Spanish and a bilingual family magazine. It was quite the busy and successful enterprise.

The Californian was owned by Gannett Co, which since November 2025 has been named USA Today Co after its flagship publication. At the time, Gannett owned about 85 newspapers as well as numerous TV and radio stations. Working at The Californian felt a bit like the best of both worlds. It had the family atmosphere of a small local paper, but with corporate backing.

Unfortunately, however, once we got to the mid-2000s, the newspaper industry was starting to feel the pinch as news consumption and its attendant advertising revenues began to move online. Free web sites like Craigslist decimated classified advertising revenue and circulation numbers began to drop steadily.

Gannett began to consolidate its California operations around 2006, resulting in job losses in several departments for Salinas as the work moved to the Visalia and Palm Springs papers. Seeing the writing on the wall, I left in late 2007 for another job, dodging a bullet as my position was eliminated across Gannett in early 2008.

Sadly, things only went downhill for the Californian. By 2016 it had dropped from six days a week to three, and El Sol became an online only publication, closing completely in 2022. Printing was outsourced, and in 2017 the building the newspaper had occupied since 1949 was shuttered. It has remained empty and for sale or rent for almost a decade. The remaining skeleton staff moved into a small office in a strip mall.

The outside of the building looks quite forlorn now:

Photographs of the interior on the realtor’s web site are hard to look at; they look like scenes from a post-apocalyptic movie. This used to be a busy newsroom:

The handful of editorial staff left at the Californian continued to dwindle as they left for other opportunities, and in 2023 the Los Angeles Times published a story about the last reporter at the Salinas newspaper leaving. Today, the newspaper has one reporter, who in addition to covering Salinas news writes articles for other papers in the USA Today network.

Back when I was working there, we could not have foreseen that a city of over 150,000 people would one day be essentially without a local newspaper. With the best will in the world, the current configuration of the Californian could not be said to be providing complete or even adequate local coverage.

Other local newspapers tell a similar story. The Monterey Herald used to inhabit a large facility in a business park, now it is in a small office and again outsources its printing.

The local newspaper used to be a vital part of most communities, driving civic engagement and holding those in power to account. Seeing one’s name in print or having one’s picture in the paper was a big life event, one that would be remembered for years to come, the clipping saved as a souvenir. (I still have a newspaper photo of my school production of HMS Pinafore, from 1979!) Now, the local paper is fast becoming a thing of the past.

I suppose my point is that the Californian and other local papers are just one of those things that quietly disappeared while we were looking the other way. You can probably think of others. I think if there is a message to myself in all of this, it is to appreciate the things we have and enjoy while they are still around, and if there is a way to support them, do so. Use it or lose it, as the saying goes.