Every week, two newspapers in America die. In March 2023, The Welch News—the only newspaper in McDowell County, West Virginia—was shuttered.
Publisher Missy Nester tried to keep the nearly 100-year-old paper alive as long as she could. The Welch News published three times weekly. Nester tried to keep up with the times, adding a website with a paywall in 2020. The paper added digital subscribers, but it wasn't enough to make up for the loss of print subscribers, which tumbled during the COVID-19 pandemic from a high of about 4,000 to just 2,400 before the newspaper closed.
