The staff of The Sentinel, Neighborhood News Forum will be printing the last issue for March 2010, and daily updates to the website will cease at the end of March.
From the Publishers’s Page:
Last year was trying for most North Portland businesses. But for the past two years, The Sentinel has seen a steady decline in advertising revenue. This decline represents both the impact of the recession and the challenges of running an advertising-driven business in today’s media-saturated environment. At present The Sentinel is 100% print advertising-driven, and it is now clear that we can no longer provide services to our readers and advertisers at our current level of quality. I hope I speak for all Sentinel contributors when I say we have worked exhaustively to provide the community with accurate, high-quality, professional news in a multi-media, interactive format. We hope that this paper served as a useful provider of information, an engaging tool for public discussion and a source for amusement and insight.
This is sad news for the North Portland community especially, but really for the whole city and fans and supporters of local media. The Sentinel is one of my daily reads, and one of the best small local papers I’ve had the pleasure of reading.
One bright spot in the news, however, is that The Sentinel is considering a project to put all of the paper’s archives online and in a format that is easily accessible to the public. To make a tax-deductible contribution to the online archives fund, go to www.portlandmedialab.com, call the paper at 503.287.3880, or use the ChipIn widget on the website sidebar. And you can also advertise in the final, March, edition of the paper by calling 503.706.7190 or visiting the Advertise page.
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