The Chronicle's presses have stopped after 117 years

The Chronicle published its final edition Tuesday. Founded in 1909, the locally owned weekly leaves Springfield, Cottage Grove, Creswell and Pleasant Hill with one fewer place that routinely showed up for school boards, high school sports and small-town government.

Executive editor and part-owner Erin Tierney-Heggenstaller wrote that subscriptions and advertising were not enough to carry pandemic-era Small Business Administration debt after repayment relief ended. Lookout reported that tariffs increased newsprint costs and postal problems threatened delivery even after the paper gave up its brick-and-mortar newsroom.

The staff was small: two reporters, eight contributors and four photographers, according to Lookout's review of the paper's site. Small is not the same as disposable. The closure removes a public record assembled one meeting, game and obituary at a time.