News 8
Newspaper serving 5 suburbs folds 
06:45 PM CDT on Friday, July 3, 2009
Five North Texas towns have lost a big piece of their community, all in one day.
The newspaper serving Cedar Hill, Desoto, Duncanville, Lancaster and Grand Prairie has, without warning, published its last edition.
Readers are not only upset, but unsure as to where they will now get their local news.
A handful of papers in a Today News stand in Duncanville are about to join the growing ranks of a dying breed.
Another small-town newspaper has succumbed to the Darwinian forces being felt throughout the industry, silencing the voices of the likes of Steve Snyder, Jack Armstrong and Marikay Dewberry.
No one is left to herald the local weddings and births and sons and daughters serving overseas.
Next door to the shuttered newspaper office, patrons of the X-Clusive Hair Salon have other laments.
"It was a good paper for the Duncanville School District," said Duncanville resident Ethel Brock. "It had everything that was going on with the school district."
While beauty shop gossip is fun, patrons say a community still needs an official source for civic support and pride.
"I think we are actually losing out on something because that was something I would go to for our community," said Cedar Hill resident Lakeisha Williams.
The Today Newspapers did everything it could to offset rising costs and loss of revenue but at 75-cents a paper, it still wasn't nearly enough.
The former publisher of the small Oak Cliff Tribune, Mark Housewright, can attest.
He folded his paper last February after years of struggling to hold on. He predicts very few can.
"I think in places maybe like a Brownwood, Texas or somewhere like that, you might see those kinds of papers be able to hang on," said Housewright. "But as far as the suburban rings and things like that, I think it's going to be very difficult."
Difficult, perhaps, to not have a place to celebrate lives nor a space to say goodbyes.
