On Friday, the Youngstown Vindicator announced that it was shutting down operations at the end of August. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported:

The Vindicator, which recently marked its 150th publication anniversary and is Youngstown’s only daily newspaper, told employees Friday afternoon that it will close. . . .

A source confirmed to The Plain Dealer that The Vindicator’s owners had sought out buyers but were unable to find one. The paper will stop printing at the end of August. . . .

The closure of the paper will leave a community of hundreds of thousands without a daily newspaper. Mahoning County alone has more than 200,000 residents.

News and Tech explains:

The closing had been feared for some time given the shrinking page counts and a sharp decline in ad placements.

Harvard’s Neiman Lab doubts that anyone will buy the paper:

The Vindicator hired a newspaper broker in December 2017 and got substantial interest from only two chains. Each eventually backed out, and “so we ended up with no potential buyers,” [general manager] Brown said.

Neiman reporter Joshua Benton further explains:

But in at least in this one case, the consolidators have decided that financially there’s nothing of value left to consolidate. The tricks they’ve been using — cut staff, outsource editing, outsource production, regionalize ad sales — apparently weren’t worth trying in Youngstown. And that’s scary as hell.

Will someone buy the paper? The News and Tech article also looked at potential buyers:

The most likely candidate would be the Tribune Chronicle in Warren, which is owned by The Ogden Newspapers, based in Wheeling, W.Va. Ogden is owned by the Nutting family, which also owns the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The article did not say if Ogden was interested. I have my doubts. If further downsizing and outsourcing had already been considered by others, what could Ogden do differently to make the paper profitable? Similarly, Ogden had been rumored to be interested in the Reading (PA) Eagle but the local chain passed. Last week it was sold to a hedge fund company. As the Reading Eagle reported on Saturday:

Without any local competition, the company was sold to MediaNews Group, a national newspaper chain based in Denver. MediaNews Group, which is owned by a hedge fund and has a reputation for making deep cuts at newspapers it buys, was the lone qualified bid.

The decline of the American newspaper continues.