Tucson Citizen Publishing on "Day-to-Day" Basis While Potential Sale of Paper is Negotiated

Today, Tucson Citizen employees have a job and the paper's customers have something to read. As for tomorrow -- wait and see. That's going to be the pattern for the next few days as the Tucson Citizen, the state's oldest newspaper, publishes on a "day-to-day" basis while waiting to see if...

By Ray Stern

March 17, 2009

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Today, Tucson Citizen employees have a job and the paper's customers have something to read.

As for tomorrow -- wait and see.

That's going to be the pattern for the next few days as the Tucson Citizen, the state's oldest newspaper, publishes on a "day-to-day" basis while waiting to see if either of two interested buyers want to close a deal.

Talk about a nail-biter of a workplace -- but it beats the alternative: Prior to today's announcement, the Citizen was slated to close on Saturday. It's just the latest victim of Gannett's fiscal bloodbath, and it probably won't be the last.

Can the Arizona Republic, Gannett's flagship paper in Arizona, be that far behind?

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Ray Stern is the former news editor of Phoenix New Times. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Arizona for more than two decades. He's won numerous awards for his reporting, including the Arizona Press Club's Don Bolles Award for Investigative Journalism.