This article has been edited since it first appeared in print.
Photo by Justin Vaughan
With the publication of its Feb. 1 issue, the Chesterfield Observer — named the best large weekly newspaper in the state in 2019 by the Virginia Press Association — ended its more than 25-year run.
The closing was announced in a statement on the paper’s website by owners Frank and Carol McCracken. The cause, they said, was a “significant decline” in advertising revenue during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as later supply chain issues and steep increases in production costs. In the same week the closing was announced, Carol McCracken resigned as president of the board of directors of the Virginia Press Association. Per VPA bylaws, board members must be owners or employees of member publications.
From the beginning, the paper had relied on advertising revenue, not subscriptions, to pay its bills. It was mailed for free to Chesterfield homes and made available for pickup at locations throughout the county. The Observer began charging for digital subscriptions in late 2020 and pursued financial assistance through state, federal and corporate grants and loans, the McCrackens’ statement said.
It wasn’t enough.
“In early 2023, the owners finally acknowledged the financial realities largely caused by the 2020 pandemic had become insurmountable, but they still believe in the value and power of local media as a vital resource for communities like Chesterfield County,” the statement continued.
Another print weekly covering eastern Chesterfield, the Village News, ceased publication in December 2022, leaving the county with no printed hard news source. Such a media desert is what Observer founder Greg Pearson sought to end when he launched the Observer as a monthly newspaper in 1995.
“Chesterfield already had the largest population [of a county] in the metro region, and I could see there was going to come a time when it was going to double in size,” he says. “Chesterfield County was not being covered [by local media]. There was a huge hole in the market. I believed that if we put out a good product, we could grow the business.”
By 2011, the Observer was printing almost 71,000 copies weekly, at the time the largest circulation for a single-issue weekly in the state. When Pearson sold the paper to the McCrackens in 2014, the average issue size was 32 pages.
Pearson says that his initial business plan included mailing the newspaper to affluent neighborhoods, which were identified by ZIP codes, and securing the contract for government legal notices that are required by state law to appear in a newspaper. “We could tell potential advertisers that we were the official newspaper of Chesterfield County,” he says with a laugh.
When it came to content, Pearson says he had a clear vision.
“Typically, weeklies do features and sports, but we did hard news,” he says. “In the 19 years I was at the paper, for 10 of those years I probably attended every Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meeting. I became really interested in local government. To me, it was fascinating.”
And there were no staff-written editorials.
“My feeling was we should report the news and not give our opinion,” he says, noting that he did share his thoughts on the state of local journalism via a column titled “Media Watch.”
“The [Richmond Times-Dispatch] and TV stations, I’m sure, loved me,” he says.
Rich Griset (a Richmond magazine contributor) spent nearly 10 years at the Chesterfield Observer, starting not long after he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a journalism degree. He worked as a freelancer, an editorial assistant and eventually a full-time general assignment reporter who covered education, among other topics. He remembers the paper’s dedication to reporting on government as well as the people and places found in the sprawling county.
“Everything was hyper-local,” Griset says. “We never ran a wire story; we never ran a story that didn’t have something to do with Chesterfield. Early on, Greg [Pearson] went to every single county meeting that was happening. We felt it was our mission to be there and tell people what was going on in their community.”
Griset says the staff also tried to represent Chesterfield’s diversity.
“Chesterfield is huge,” he notes. “There are upper-crust suburbs, areas off Route 1 that have had better days, areas that are rural, areas that are a lot like the city. There were people who were happy to spend their entire day in their part of the county, but we wanted to show other parts of the county.”
Now, Griset says, there’s nothing to take the paper’s place. “It’s too much for the RTD to cover Chesterfield and the Tri-Cities and state government,” he says. “We were an entire publication focused on one locality. I think we did a really good job at our best.”
When asked if he’d consider a second act with the newspaper, Pearson demurs.
“I’d like to have the paper continue,” Pearson acknowledges. “But I’ve been retired almost nine years, and I’m coming up on [age] 79. That’s a pretty good reason not to go back into the grind. I loved what I did. When people ask me about my various careers, that’s the one I talk about.”
