The Toledo Blade will print its final edition at the end of the year, unless a buyer steps in before then, according to an email sent by the nearly 200-year-old paper’s current owners to its staff on Tuesday.
Block Communications, which has held The Blade since 1925, reached the “extremely difficult decision” due to financial considerations, president and chief operating officer Jodi Miehls informed staff, as reported by the paper.
“The Block Family’s continued investment to keep the Blade open is no longer an option,” Miehls wrote. “The financial losses the Blade has endured for years are simply not sustainable.”
Miehls’ notice came after negotiations over a contract late last month.
The NewsGuild, which represents Blade’s staff, said that its Toledo chapter voted down a proposed contract in a 46-25 vote.
“The Company’s proposal would have axed seniority, halved severance for its most experienced employees, and allowed the outsourcing of all Guild work,” said Lillian King, Blade features writer and Toledo NewsGuild bargaining chair. “All content at The Blade could be created or edited with Al, with no protections for journalists or requirements to disclose Al usage to its readers.”
Instead of returning to the bargaining table last week, the NewsGuild said that the Block Communications board decided to sell or shutter the paper.
Block Communications similarly cited financial losses when it announced in January that it would cease publishing another newspaper, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But about two weeks before it was to shut down in May, Block announced that the nonprofit Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism would buy the newspaper and keep it open.
A team of reporters from The Blade won the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting in 2004 for articles about an elite Army platoon accused of killing unarmed Vietnamese civilians in 1967. Reporters at the newspaper also were finalists for the prestigious journalism award in 2000, again for investigative reporting, and in 2006 in the public service category.
Among the newspaper’s alums was Mildred Wirt Benson, better known to legions of Nancy Drew fans as Carolyn Keene, the original author of the mystery books featuring the plucky amateur detective.
The Blade was founded in 1835 — two years before Toledo was officially incorporated as a city — and says it is the city’s oldest continually operating business. Paul Block Sr., a newspaper mogul, took over the paper in August 1926.
An advertisement printed the day after Block was introduced to the newspaper staff said the date “will long be remembered by us as the beginning of a new era of good will in our association with the Toledo Blade,” along with a list of all of the newspaper’s employees, according to the paper.
“Block Communications Board of Directors and the Block Family are truly disappointed to have reached this point,” Miehls said in Tuesday’s email, just over a hundred years later. “Unfortunately, the realities facing local journalism have left us in this situation.”
