Lee Walls, president and CEO of Walls Newspapers and owner of The Bolivar Commercial, said: “It is a sad thing to have to announce, and it is something I’ve spent years and a great deal of money, trying to avoid.”
In announcing the paper's plans in early April, Walls said, “Facebook, and social media in general, have done more to harm community newspapers than the Internet as a whole. With social media, a user can choose to have a ‘news’ feed of legitimate stories, incorrect stories, hateful rhetoric, harmful gossip and defamatory commentary. As if that’s not enough, they can have all of that in the form of video or text. You get all of that by simply giving up your personal data and privacy, no money required,” Walls said.
“We don’t have the option to compete against that business model because we are held to a higher standard. Based on very objective statistics, it is clear that people are choosing social media and to give up their privacy, over community journalism."
Read more from this story in which The Bolivar Commercial announced its plans to cease publication.
