For the past six years, a newspaper called Carriage Towne News has arrived in my mailbox every week. The next one, scheduled to arrive on February 1, will be the last. The lead article in this week’s paper explains:

The Carriage Towne News — a free weekly newspaper dependent on small local ads and a wrapper for advertising circulars — will publish its final edition Thursday, Feb. 1. …
 
Financial support for the paper has seriously eroded in recent times as the critical revenue from advertising content dwindled while newsprint, production and mail distribution costs continued to increase.
 
Unfortunately, those factors combined to make it economically prohibitive to continue publication and direct marketing of the paper through mailed distribution to 26,000 southern New Hampshire households.

It’s not clear whether the Carriage Towne News website will continue to exist and publish news.

The Internet has had a gigantic impact on all kinds of printed publications. Small, local newspapers have been among the hardest hit. It’s hard to replace what they do. I often ignored the paper, but it was good to know it was there. A few weeks ago, it gave me a quarter page of coverage for my work accompanying silent films.

The name refers to the fact that in the nineteenth century, Kingston, New Hampshire had a thriving industry making carriages and coaches.

Local news websites may fill the niche. Some of them, though, are fake local sites, run by people from far away with dubious agendas and equally dubious “news,” either made up or plagiarized.

The world is smaller than ever. I regularly talk with friends in other countries. Every advance has a cost, though, and the cost of greater global connection is the loss of some local connections.