Newspapers close in Stillwater, Lake Elmo

Barely a week after the parent company of one Stillwater newspaper filed for bankruptcy protection, its competitor has ceased publication.

The weekly Stillwater Courier and its companion, the weekly Lake Elmo Leader, couldn't gain enough financial support from merchants to stay profitable, editor Yvonne Klinnert told readers in the final editions Tuesday.

"Some community newspapers are succumbing to the same economic pressures that are rocking so many businesses, and the news business especially," she wrote in a column.

The cities are only a few miles apart in the St. Croix Valley in Washington County.

The Courier's rival paper, the Gazette, informed its readers last week that its owner, American Community Newspapers Inc., had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The filing will allow for financial restructuring with no changes in day-to-day operations of the Gazette, said Robert Cole, group publisher of Sun Newspapers, the Minnesota division of the larger company.

More than 40 suburban newspapers and websites belong to Sun Newspapers.

The Stillwater Courier and Lake Elmo Leader had a combined staff of seven who all lost their jobs, Klinnert confirmed Wednesday. The newspapers' parent company, Rivertown Newspapers, bought the Courier four years ago and launched the Leader six years ago.

"Personally, shutting down these newspapers is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my almost 30-year career," she said. "Ownership leaders gave us free rein to produce the best newspaper we knew how, a trust for which I will always be grateful."

Rivertown Newspapers is a division of Forum Communications of Fargo, N.D. It publishes several other east-metro newspapers, including the Woodbury Bulletin, the Hastings Star Gazette and the Hudson, Wis., Star-Observer.

The Stillwater Gazette, which publishes Monday through Friday, has a circulation of about 3,100.