Times-Standard announces it will suck one day less each week

As part of its ongoing effort to run itself into the ground, the Times-Standard announced that after the first of the year it will cease publication of its Monday edition.

Media News Group, the Times-Standard’s parent company, will additionally shutter the Humboldt Beacon, a weekly that managed to serve the Eel River valley just fine for more than 100 years before MNG took it over in 2005.

In a Monday memo, Publisher Dave Kuta wrote, “None of these decisions were made easily, and had I routed this announcement through copy editing instead of going it alone so I could spring it on staff, someone would have caught the subject-object disagreement at the beginning of this sentence.”

Okay, okay, we made that last part up.

This news comes on the heels of a reported blow-out between Times-Standard Managing Editor Kim Wear and City Editor Dave Rosso, who had returned to the daily after its previous city editor came down with a heroin addiction. Following the fight with Wear, Rosso is said to have stormed out and returned the next day to tender his resignation.

So what does all of this mean for Humboldt County? As much as we enjoy making sport of the Times-Standard’s sometimes glorious fails, we don’t wish job loss on anyone, and losing another community newspaper can’t be good news for any of us.

Read the longer second-day article here.