By JEFFERSON PUBLIC RADIO and THE OREGONIAN/OregonLive

The Rogue Valley’s largest newspaper, the Medford Mail Tribune announces it will cease all operations this week.

The Mail Tribune’s publisher, Steven Saslow, made the announcement on Wednesday afternoon. He cited industry-wide advertising reductions, rising costs of producing content, and difficulty hiring staff.

The Mail Tribune ceased print operations last September. The final online edition will be published Friday.

The Medford Mail Tribune, established in 1910, will cease publication this week.

Together, he said, those challenges made continuing the Mail Tribune “unsustainable.” Saslow could not be reached by phone for comment on Wednesday.

The paper was formed as a merger between the Medford Mail and the Medford Tribune in 1909, guided by editor George Putnam.

The paper expanded in the 1990s and early 2000s when it purchased the Ashland Daily Tidings and The Nickel – a local classifieds paper – in 2002. It changed hands several times in the early 2000s. It was purchased by current owner and publisher Steven Saslow through Rosebud Media in 2017 for $15 million from GateHouse Media.

Two years later in 2019, the Mail Tribune shuttered the Ashland Daily Tidings.

This isn’t the first challenge facing local journalism in Southern Oregon. The Klamath Falls Herald and News briefly lost its entire reporting staff in March of 2022. The Bandon Western World ceased printing in 2020 and the Coos Bay World went from publishing five days per week to two.

Online-only nonprofit Ashland.news opened in 2022 to fill the journalism gap in the Rogue Valley. It was started by Bert Etling, a former editor at the Daily Tidings.

The Mail Tribune’s closure will result in a dramatic loss of news coverage for the biggest population center in southern Oregon. Jackson County, where Medford is the county seat, is home to nearly 224,000.

Travis Moore, publisher of the Daily Courier, a newspaper serving Grants Pass and the surrounding area, said Wednesday that his company would move to hire some Mail Tribune journalists and expand its coverage in nearby Jackson County.

More than 2,500 of the nation’s newspapers have closed since 2005, according to a report by Northwestern University researcher and former newspaper executive Penny Abernathy — more than a quarter of the newspapers that existed in that year. Surviving news organizations have gotten smaller, relying on fewer journalists to cover even growing cities and metropolitan areas.

The Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon last year counted 241 operating local news outlets in Oregon, and nine in Jackson County — including the Mail Tribune.

The newspaper’s closure is not surprising given the national trend, said Andrew DeVigal, the center’s director.

“The news should still be alarming, I would hope, because the effects of these nationwide closures of news outlets are felt particularly acutely in less populated, rural communities,” he said. “It often results in a rise in political corruption, in polarization, in disengagement and loss of community connection.”

The sentiment was echoed by Connie Saldana, a 32-year-resident of the Rogue Valley and a Mail Tribune subscriber for nearly as long.

“No more major local newspaper? What a loss to the community in terms of ability of all to stay deeply informed and connected,” Saldana said. “Democracy itself is dependent on those two factors. Local TV news does not provide the depth and diversity we need to stay informed and connected.”