EDMOND, Okla. (AP) — A newspaper on the northern edge of Oklahoma City touted as Oklahoma’s oldest is closing.
In a “To Our Readers” column Saturday, The Edmond Sun announced it would merge with The Norman Transcript with that newspaper providing its news coverage starting Wednesday.
The column cited the economic downturn as a result of the coronavirus.
“This crisis has had a significant impact on The Edmond Sun. Most of our revenue comes from advertisements from local businesses, which are also suffering at this difficult time,” according to the column by Mark Millsap, group publisher for Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., which owns both newspapers.
Even before the the coronavirus, newspapers were in trouble with advertising revenue steadily declining as readers increasingly got news online.
In the past 15 years, at least 2,100 cities and towns have lost a paper, most of them weeklies, and newsroom employment has shrunk by half since 2004.
The Edmond Sun’s website says it first published in July 1889, just months after an April 1889 land run opened the then Indian Territory to white settlers and nearly 20 years before Oklahoma statehood.