As reporters from around the world descended on Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 general election, the Scranton Times-Tribune’s office was eerily quiet. 

The Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom – just blocks from where Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz held a rally on Friday – may have been buzzing four or eight years earlier, but that’s no longer the case for Scranton’s only daily newspaper. 

MediaNews Group, a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, purchased the Times-Tribune and three other local dailies for an undisclosed amount in August 2023 and made swift and dramatic cuts to coverage and staff, producing what loyal readers and former writers say are fewer and lower-quality stories, limited local perspectives and softball political reporting. 

The acquisition is another example of large corporations buying local businesses – from newspapers to pharmacies to grocery stores – and undermining local culture, said State Sen. Marty Flynn, who represents Scranton and surrounding areas. 

Herb Smith, a former sports reporter at the Scranton Times-Tribune, couldn’t remember any layoffs at the paper since the Great Recession, and business seemed steady under the stewardship of the Lynett family, who had owned the publication since 1895. 

“It felt like a family business,” he remembered. 

MediaNews Group, or MNG, is known in the media industry for acquiring local papers, such as The Denver Post and San Jose’s Mercury News, before reducing headcount and stretching the remaining newsroom thin. 

Smith said he and other longtime journalists received severance options hours into MNG’s ownership. An archived page on the Times-Tribune’s website showed 41 staffers last September, a number that has dwindled to 22 today. And they primarily work from home after MNG vacated the iconic Times Tower downtown in favor of a smaller space, and shuttered a printing facility in nearby Scott Township. 

Now, with just a week to go until the 2024 general election, some readers say the turmoil at Scranton’s once-revered paper has left a void of political news and analysis in Northeast Pennsylvania – a key battleground in perhaps the most important swing state in the country. 

Patrick Joyce, 72, and his family have subscribed to the Times-Tribune since the 1950s.

“When the acquisition happened it was like turning off a lightswitch,” Joyce said. 

The two-page daily editorial section he loved – once a home for political discourse in Northeast Pennsylvania, complete with in-house cartoons – has been cut down, with occasional political commentary spread across a page or less. Joyce said it used to take him 45 minutes to go through the paper. Now, it’s “15 minutes if you’re lucky.”

In the Sunday, Oct. 27 edition, the Opinion section featured a quarter-page editorial imploring young people to vote, a cartoon about a proposed county tax hike and a selection of letters to the editor.

Syndicated out-of-state writers have largely replaced local voices in the Times-Tribune’s politics coverage, said former Lackawanna County Elections Director Maryann Spellman Young, a Democrat who once wrote a regular guest column for the paper. 

As a result, Scrantonites may get national commentary on Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, but they receive limited information about the down-ballot races and policy discussions impacting their community. 

Edward S. Condra, the lead publisher for MNG in Eastern Pennsylvania, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Representatives from Alden Global Capital also could not be reached.

Scranton native Jason McDonough, 44, said voters in Northeast Pennsylvania, as in many communities, are turning to more polarized national news sources in lieu of a robust local media. 

“We’re getting pushed to this tribal politics because there’s no voice in between,” McDonough said, noting that the priorities for Lackawanna County may be different from what voters see in the national media. 

The Electric City has been a one-newspaper town since the early 2000s, but it has always been a newspaper town. The old Times Tower, now vacant aside from the fifth floor, houses an outdoor museum with encased old-style printing presses and plaques celebrating community news. A statue of former editor Edward J. Lynett sits on a bench outside. 

“It has always been a first-class newspaper,” Joyce said of the Times-Tribune. 

To be sure, not everyone in Scranton saw the Lynetts’ newspaper as a force for balance and localism. 

Dan Naylor, chairman of the Lackawanna County GOP, claimed the Times-Tribune has always been left-leaning and, if anything, has been less biased since MNG took over. But Naylor still derided the dangers in flocking only to national networks like CNN or Fox News and never hearing different perspectives. 

In accordance with MNG policy, the Times-Tribune did not endorse candidates in any of this year’s elections, a controversial decision larger outlets like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times also took.  

Young conceded that Scranton’s paper tended to endorse Democrats in past elections because the Lynetts are Irish-American Democrats from a deep blue part of town. However, members of the editorial board gave George W. Bush their blessing in 2000 and backed Republican Lou Barletta in his 2008 congressional race, and they played a crucial role in grilling candidates during endorsement interviews. 

“If the Democrat was a scoundrel, the Democrat didn’t get endorsed,” Young said. 

Tim O’Hearn, a third-generation Scranton native who now lives in New York, is concerned about the Times-Tribune’s cuts in part because Scranton has what he called a history of small-dollar corruption in local politics and business. 

Former mayor Bill Courtright was released from prison in August, having served almost four years for a public corruption conviction. Earlier this year, a U.S. District Court sentenced former Scranton police union president Paul Helring to six months in prison for wage fraud.  

Looking beyond this election cycle, O’Hearn sees a longer-term risk of losing the investigative reporters needed to hold local officials accountable. He’s suggested his family boycott MNG and cancel their subscription, but that’s harder than it sounds in a place where loyalty runs deep and alternatives are scarce. 

“It’s still the best we have,” O’Hearn said. “There’s no other periodical publication. There’s nothing.”