CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two community newspapers serving Putnam and Cabell counties have gone out of business.
On April 2, the Putnam Standard and Cabell Standard printed their final editions before shutting down operations. Both papers were controlled by Stadelman Publishing LLC, a company owned and operated by Kelly and Chris Stadelman.
The closure of both papers comes less than two years into the Stadelmans’ ownership of the weeklies, which they took over in August 2013. They bought the papers after selling off The Parsons Advocate, a weekly newspaper in Tucker County, that they operated from 2004 to 2011.
On Monday, Kelly Stadelman, who has managed both papers since the takeover, said the decision to stop publishing was one based on balance sheets, not the heart.
“We knew when we took over that there was going to be an uphill climb,” said Stadelman. “We thought we could overcome it, but we realized in the past year that we couldn’t sustain the paper economically.”
When they purchased the paper in 2013, Stadelman said she and her husband — who has since moved taken a job as Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s communication director — hoped they could resurrect the weeklies, which had operated in some form since the 1800s…
