Hugs, Tears, Champagne for Final Edition : Presses Run Last Time for Columbus Paper
Amid teary-eyed hugs and the popping of champagne corks, staffers of the Citizen-Journal put together the newspaper’s final edition.
The paper, a 26-year-old Scripps Howard publication serving 110,000 readers, said “Goodbye Columbus” today with a six-page supplement on the C-J’s history--a New Year’s Eve special.
“It looks almost like a Mardi Gras,” Managing Editor Seymour Raiz observed as he surveyed the city room illuminated by television lights and jammed with outside reporters interviewing his staff.
The newspaper’s fate was sealed when Akron-area businessman Nyles V. Reinfeld announced Sunday that he came up $100,000 short of the estimated $1.5 million he needed to keep the newspaper in business. Reinfeld had announced Nov. 15 that he planned to buy the morning newspaper.
The Citizen-Journal was allowed to fold by Scripps Howard when the Dispatch Printing Co. announced earlier this year that it would not renew a joint operating agreement under which it printed and distributed the C-J.
The demise of the C-J leaves Columbus, a metropolitan area exceeding 1 million people, with only one hometown daily newspaper. The Columbus Dispatch, heretofore an evening paper, will begin publishing in the morning Wednesday.
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