No joke, Orleans Hub is 12 years old today
Photo by Tom Rivers: A boat heads east on the Erie Canal in Albion in this photo on Sept. 23, 2015. This is a big year in the community with the 200th anniversary of both the canal and Orleans County.
Orleans Hub has reached our 12th birthday today. The online news site went live for the first time on April 1, 2013.
We have consistently posted about 3,500 articles a year – an average of nearly 10 a day, every day. This post is number 42,002.
We are focused on Orleans County, which hasn’t had a printed newspaper based in the county since the end of 2013 when The Journal-Register shut down. The weekly Albion Advertiser closed in May 2013. The Orleans Hub didn’t knock these papers out of business. They had been struggling for years.
The newspaper business has been a very challenging environment the past two decades, with more than 3,200 closing since 2005, according to the Associated Press. The papers have lost a good chunk of their advertising and classifieds, and also their paid subscription base.
In 2023, an average of two newspapers a week shut down. Close to Orleans County, The Cortland Standard printed its last edition on March 13 after 157 years in business.
Some communities have seen online-only news sites start up to help fill the gap from the shuttered newspapers. There were 81 digital sites that went live with local news in 2023, according to the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University.
While some communities are served by online-only sites, these publications like the Orleans Hub are hurt by an archaic state law that doesn’t allow them to be considered “official newspapers” for legal notices. Those notices must be in print newspapers with a “paid circulation.”
We would welcome the opportunity to carry these notices to better serve our readers and to receive some of that revenue. We don’t charge to access the site. We want the news to be available to everyone. (We are working on a faster server so it doesn’t take as long for the site to load.)
Most of the towns, villages, school districts and even Orleans County use The Daily News of Batavia to publish legal notices. The Daily News has some coverage in Orleans County, but not nearly what is posted by the Orleans Hub. We also consistently have 7,000 to 10,000 “unique visitors” or readers each day.
The Daily News is listed by the New York News Publishers Association in the “Under 10,000 Circulation Class.”
Tom Rivers, the Hub editor, worked at The Daily News for 16 years before leaving in March 2013 to help start the Orleans Hub. (I appreciate my time there and The Daily News staff deserves lots of respect for their work trying to cover the GLOW region. It’s a big job and they make an admirable effort.)
Sample News Group purchased The Daily News from Johnson Newspaper Corp. and officially took ownership of the newspaper on May 1, 2023. Sample News is based in Huntington, Pa.
The Orleans Hub also had a recent ownership change when Karen Sawicz retired and Brad London became the owner on Jan. 1. London lives in Albion and has been with the Hub since Day 1 selling advertising. All of the Orleans Hub staff live in Orleans County.
The Orleans Hub welcomes local municipal leaders and our state legislators to take up the battle in getting legal notices to be an option in local online-only news sites. Let’s give the local government leaders the option to decide where these notices can be best be seen by the most people. Right now, the Orleans Hub isn’t a legal option.
Regardless to what happens with the legal notices, we’re committed to covering the community with many new articles every day.
