That’s exactly why I framed the closure as a corporate failure: because while ownership walked away, the community is still fighting to preserve local journalism. That tension — loss from the top, resilience from the ground up — is the heart of this story.

You’re right — nuance and recent context are part of the picture. And you’re also right that the emergence of Redwood Voice and the effort to buy the paper show the community isn’t giving up.

The real story here isn’t one man’s reputation. It’s that an entire county has lost its newspaper, and the people who relied on it for accountability and local reporting are the ones left paying the price.

If Country Media had cared about the integrity of its paper of record, they would have recognized the problems you mention and replaced leadership. That’s what responsible ownership does. Instead, they let it deteriorate and then pulled the plug.

I don’t disagree that Gitlan was divisive — plenty of people in Del Norte remember his baggage. But reducing the closure of a nearly 150-year-old paper to the actions of one person misses the larger truth. The Triplicate was bigger than any single editor or publisher.

I’m gonna call bull on that analysis. Editors, of course, can be polarizing, but ownership can right that ship if they see fit. Clearly Country Media, Inc. didn’t value the Triplicate enough to do so.