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April 3, 2020

Or not to Bee: Newtown’s beloved weekly stops printing during crisis

PHOTO | Contributed
By Michael C. Bingham

Venerable, quirky, beloved, idiosyncratic — those are all words frequently used to describe the 143-year-old Newtown Bee. 

Now, beginning next week, another word will describe the family-owned weekly broadsheet: gone. At least for now.

In an editorial published Thursday, Publisher R. Scudder Smith, whose family has owned the paper since 1879, told readers that the paper would discontinue its print product “for the time being.”

Smith said the Bee will still post news on its website as well as on the paper’s social media platforms such as Facebook.

The paper’s sister publication, Antiques & the Arts Weekly, will also suspend printing on paper.

In early March, Smith wrote, “I made a decision to combat the horrific coronavirus by decreasing our staff, retaining a necessary small number of employees to produce the paper, for we were determined to bring the printed news of Newtown to its citizens.

“This small stalwart staff,” Smith continued, “has for the last two weeks put forth great effort to do this work, but we were suddenly brought to a standstill when we saw the number of rapidly expanding number of cases and deaths in Connecticut.” 

So Smith, whose ancestor Arthur J. Smith founded the paper in 1877, made the difficult decision to pull the plug on the print edition, in part to safeguard his skeleton staff from the contagion.

The weekly’s broadsheet format, folksy voice and proudly parochial coverage of everything from church ham-and-bean suppers to school sports have informed and entertained generations of Newtowners. But the Bee was more than sewing circles and Girl Scout cookie sales: On December 14, 2012, the Bee’s Shannon Hicks was one of the first reporters on the scene of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School long before the national media hordes descended on this erstwhile idyllic Fairfield County community.

The Bee’s woes are a mere microcosm of the larger media landscape in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. It is an irony that while readership and audience engagement have soared as people crave up-to-date information about the medical emergency, the financial lifeblood of most media companies — advertising revenue — have slowed to a trickle in the wake of the national business shutdown.

Earlier this week, the largest U.S. daily newspaper chain, Gannett, announced a combination of pay cuts and temporary furloughs in an effort to ride out the crisis. Another media firm, Lee Enterprises, is asking employees to accept two weeks of unpaid leave during the next three months at its more than 70 newspapers.

Publisher Smith started at the paper as a rookie reporter six decades ago, and later followed in his father’s footsteps to become editor and publisher. It’s the only job he’s ever known.

“The Bee has been the heart of Newtown for all these 143 years,” Smith wrote, “and our fervent hope is to rebound in a few months.

“God Bless All to bring us through this safely.”

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