By InDepthNH Staff

The News and Sentinel in Colebrook, under its third generation of Harrigan family ownership, ceased publication Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, its last print edition after publisher Karen Harrigan, the daughter of storied North Country legend John Harrigan, announced the closure and said efforts to sell the paper two years ago were unsuccessful.

The newspaper has been an institution in Colebrook. The story published Wednesday on the paper’s website noted its rich history, with roots that go back to 1870, making it the longest continuously operating business in Colebrook. Karen’s grandparents, Fred and Esther Harrigan, ran it from the late 1950s until their deaths in 1990 and 1991, when John Harrigan took over. Karen joined The News and Sentinel in 1997, became editor in 2000, and bought the paper from her father in 2002.

John Harrigan was a frequent contributor to InDepthNH.org until his death on Dec. 26, 2022. He was a publisher and avid outdoorsman who wrote a popular column for InDepthNH.org and in the New Hampshire Sunday News for many years. He was 75. He had a 52-year career in journalism, and Barbara Tetreault, retired managing editor of the Berlin Sun and a new board member of the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, the publisher of InDepthNH.org, said at the time of his passing that a number of reporters were nurtured and trained by Harrigan, “many with no prior experience in reporting. John also had a sense of humor that manifested itself in pothole ads and April Fool’s editions.”
Harrigan was also a leading and passionate voice in opposition to the Northern Pass transmission project that would have brought Hydro-Quebec power to southern New England.

In summer of 1997, tragedy befell the newspaper and the whole state when a deranged gunman went on a rampage, killing the paper’s editor, Dennis Joos, and District Court judge Vickie Bunnel, as well as two state troopers, Scott Phillips and Leslie Lord.

John Harrigan was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his coverage of that tragedy.

Former state Rep. Edith Tucker of Randolph, said: “The loss of another N.H. newspaper is very sad news for the North Country and our democracy.”

The newspaper’s website Wednesday notes, “The past several years of declining advertising revenues and readership numbers have taken their toll, and today’s issue is the last for The News and Sentinel.

“This was by no means an easy decision,” said editor and publisher Karen Harrigan in the final story. “We have a great team of people working here, many readers and contributors who care deeply about the paper, and some longtime, faithful advertisers who have trusted us to promote their businesses, all of whom I kept in mind while weighing the options for the paper’s future,” she said.

She also noted that two years ago an effort to sell the business, and thereby ensure its future as a community newspaper, was unsuccessful. “We came close, but it didn’t happen, and at that point I knew the writing was on the wall,” Karen Harrigan said in the paper. “We never regained our pre-Covid advertising level, and over the past few years our region has undergone a sea change that has worked against us.”

She continued: Increased opportunities for people to work from home and the growth of highspeed Internet access in the region have brought more young professionals and families here to live. “The makeup of our North Country has changed, along with the habits of younger generations who don’t look to a hometown newspaper for their news, or to advertise their businesses,” she said. “Keeping a newspaper afloat has become an uphill battle against an increasing dependence on social media, and that’s a trend that we simply can’t overcome.”