Essex County Council is speaking out against Postmedia's decision to shutdown 15 community newspapers across Ontario.
The news came without warning last week affecting the Kingsville Reporter, Lakeshore News, LaSalle Post, Tecumseh Shoreline and Tilbury Times locally.
Tecumseh Deputy Mayor Joe Bachetti, says nothing can take the place of a small community newspaper.
"That's going to have a devastating effect on promoting the news and events in our small and rural communities," he says. "Basically they're going to be shutting down our community voice for discussion on local decisions. It would have been nice to have been given notice that this was happening, but it just got thrown to us and boom, they're gone."
Bachetti says our communities deserve better.
"I know there's always the bottom line and there's financial reasons why these decisions are made, but it's important that they hear from us that our residents really look forward to those weeklies," he says. "We want them to know that we're not happy, we're disappointed and to reconsider the decision."
County Warden Gary McNamara, who's also the mayor of Tecumseh, is questioning the timing of the decision.
"The timing just wasn't right and to do this under the screen of COVID-19. I understand the bottom line and so forth, but there's a lot of businesses as well that are trying to maintain a semblance of themselves during the pandemic. Certainly, that could have been held off," he says.
County council has unanimously approved sending a letter of disapproval to Postmedia and upper levels of government on behalf of the county and all local municipalities.
The five local papers forced to close have combined for more than 400-years of service in the community with the Kingsville Reporter around the longest — it had been in operation for 144-years.