As the Toledo Free Press recently reported, barring a sale by its owner, Block Communications, Inc., The Blade, will cease operations Dec. 31. While The Blade had shifted to only two days of print delivery, its presence in the digital arena, including an app, website, and social media platforms, were thought of as core to its future. A future that is, demonstrably, uncertain.
However, The Blade isn’t the only northwest Ohio print publication to recently announce difficult news, impacting both its employees and the communities they cover.
On Friday, The Press — a free, weekly print publication that covered eastern Lucas, northern Wood, and all of Ottawa and Sandusky counties — announced its final edition, citing “ongoing economic conditions,” despite attempting the transition to a subscription model.
The Press has been a small, family-owned operation since its inception in 1972, and as one of its final hires told the TFP, that was reflected in her experiences working there.
Reflections from a current and former employee
Katie Siebenaller, who has previously freelanced for the TFP, spent most of her working life as a part-time employee of The Press.
While majoring in communication studies at Kent State University, she said there was a requirement to obtain an internship in the following disciplines: mass communication, journalism, and graphic design.
Unsure of where to turn for one, she was reminded by her father, then an employee of the City of Oregon, that she had earlier designed an advertisement for the city’s Boomfest event, which she had also been tasked with getting placed in The Press. At his suggestion, she once again reached out to the publication’s sales team — this time, with the goal of landing an internship.
“They’re not gonna entertain me, a student, for an internship,” she recalled thinking.
But, as it turned out, they would. And did.
“Julie, the saleswoman that I had spoken with, had talked to the manager at the time, Mary Perkins, and Mary was like, ‘Yeah, that would be great!’ So, I started interning there in September of 2016, doing graphic design, writing some articles, and just anything and everything.”
Because it was a smaller operation, Siebenaller experienced as hands-on an internship as one could get.
“I was in the middle of it. It wasn’t just, you know, ‘Oh, do this little thing here, this little thing here,’ coffee runs, whatever. No, I was building ads for the paper, writing articles that went to print, helping lay out pages every week — it was just, overall, a fantastic experience. And at the end of it, they didn’t want to let me go.”
She was hired in November of 2016, and spent the next four years there, before the COVID-19 pandemic brought on new financial pressure. She returned, however, in 2025, where she’s been ever since.
“Everyone there was just amazing. They could have easily been like, ‘Yeah, this kid doesn’t know what she’s doing yet’ or whatever. But no, they fully embraced me: helping me out, guiding me, anytime I needed it; anytime I had an idea, they listened,” Siebenaller recalled.
“There’s so few places out there where you could go and have that kind of experience.”
Former Press reporter and editor Scott Carpenter (1983-95) said The Press was unique from other free distribution, weekly papers (back then, referred to as “shoppers,” he recalled) in its emphasis on news.
“They were primarily advertising, and we were, too, but we had a bigger, what we called ‘news hole.’ We had more room for news than traditional ‘shoppers’ did,” Carpenter explained.
“At one time, I think we had five reporters — full or part-time reporters — covering local governments. We had a pretty wide area: there were ten high schools in our circulation area; cities, villages, townships, and parts of four counties.”
East Toledo, Oregon, Northwood, Gibsonburg, and Genoa were what he described as the paper’s “strongholds.” An Oregon native, he said his reporting often involved people he knew, adding a personal element to the work.
“This paper was really well-read back then, and so astute city/village council people — they knew that — so they knew that when they were speaking at a council meeting, they were talking to 35,000 people who received the newspaper every week.”
Carpenter spoke to how the paper’s closure impacts him in his current role, as director of public relations for Metroparks Toledo.
“From the PR side, The Press was wonderful, because it covered pretty much every home in Oregon. So if I had some information to share with people about Pearson Metropark, for example, that was easy: just go to The Press, because they’re going to reach everybody who lived right around there. That’s going to be harder now.”
An information vacuum and unclear substitute
Siebenaller shed light on the gap left by the paper’s closure.
“We covered a circulation area that no one else did, so our paper was, first and foremost, an important service to the community,” she said. “Covering local news that wasn’t covered anywhere else. That was kind of the first thing that I thought of when we found out that the paper was going to be closing: the community’s not going to get that.”
Siebenaller said readership skewed older, and that some had even called to say it was their only source for news, which they read cover-to-cover.
“Especially for those smaller communities, sometimes it was just representation,” she said, pointing to an example of a story that carried unique significance.
“One of the last big events that I covered was a Woodville Township trustees meeting, back when there were rumors flying around of a possible data center coming in,” she said, recalling a packed house, given the status of data centers as a “really hot button issue.”
She explained how that kind of turnout, which included reporters from other area newsrooms, isn’t the norm at every meeting. That’s why she worries about the smaller things, which can easily go undetected, without a reporter from The Press being present to document them.
Siebenaller also worries the absence of an established news source will create an information vacuum, which won’t be supplanted by local TV newsrooms. It’s a concern shared by Carpenter.
“Newspapers have more space to tell the story typically, than even TV news, because the TV has so much to pack in, so you do lose some depth and the ability to provide people with more information: not just the decision that was made or something that was done, but the reasons behind it.”
