"The sun would rise over the Rockies, and Robin Gammons would run to the front porch to grab the morning paper before school. She wanted the comics and her dad wanted sports, but the Montana Standard meant more than their daily race to grab "Calvin and Hobbes" or baseball scores. When one of the three kids made honor roll, won a basketball game or dressed a freshly slain bison for the History Club, appearing in the Standard's pages made the achievement feel more real."
"The Montana Standard slashed print circulation to three days a week two years ago, cutting back the expense of printing like 1,200 U.S. newspapers over the past two decades. About 3,500 papers closed over the same time. An average of two a week have shut this year. That slow fade, it turns out, means more than changing news habits. It speaks directly to the newspaper's presence in our lives."
Robin Gammons grew up retrieving the Montana Standard each morning, with family rituals around comics, sports and saving front-page stories that made achievements feel official. A front-page story about a one-woman gallery show still yellowed on the family fridge five years later. The Montana Standard cut print circulation to three days a week two years ago amid a broader trend of reduced printing and closures: roughly 1,200 papers cut print schedules, about 3,500 closed over two decades, and an average of two papers a week have shut this year. Newspapers also served many household functions—wrapping fish, washing windows, lining outhouses—so their decline changes everyday habits and affects American democracy.
Read at Fortune
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