Galvin crop

Friday the 13th falls on a Saturday this January — a bittersweet first anniversary of when, however briefly, the Rogue Valley was left without a newspaper after 135 years.

Purists might suggest that it wasn’t last Jan. 13, when new material stopped being produced for the Mail Tribune’s website by reporters, photographers and editors who lost their jobs on two days notice, that marked the end of the newspaper.

They might instead point to Sept. 30, 2022, when the last print edition of the MT rolled off the press, that really was the date of death for the “news-paper,” something tangible and familiar to hold in one’s hands — and we can’t really argue the point.

Younger generations, more accustomed to the relatively common comings and goings of social media outlets, might have shrugged at the Mail Tribune’s demise … if they noticed at all.

Much, of course, has changed. Jackson County was an apocalyptic “news desert,” which the national media was quick to label the region, for all of a month before EO Media Group came to town, recruited a dozen or so MT refugees and — with spit and polish and elbow grease and more than a little bit of making our own luck — the Rogue Valley Tribune/Times got off the ground.

And, should you be reading this, it would appear that we’re still here.

I had retired (that sound you hear is the guffaws emanating from behind a paperback mystery being read on the couch) in the middle of ’22, but even those of us no longer at the paper took a gut-shot to the solar plexus when the plug was pulled, the lights went out and the sled was thrown into the incinerator.

You didn’t need to know the ending of “Citizen Kane” to see that was coming.

Losing the Mail Tribune was like losing a close friend, only one whose presence — in good ways and bad — is still felt.

Back in October, for instance, an auction was held, where companies so interested could pick at the corpse inside the twin white stucco buildings on 6th and Fir. Everything from office equipment to vending boxes to the press itself was available for the right price.

What will happen to the buildings themselves would be anybody’s guess. Someone with imagination, I suppose, could look at the press side of the operation, see a relative shell smack in the middle of downtown and — with spit and polish and elbow grease and more than a little bit of luck — give it a second life … a convention center, perhaps.

On the positive side of the ledger, though, the Mail Tribune’s news staff has been repurposed, as well. On a daily basis, we see the faces of those we’ve worked with before in our new digs at the Times, or bylines of former co-workers at other news outlets in the area.

Still, even after a year, it’s hard to completely let go. If, for instance, someone begins a response to a question with “Since You Asked …” Pavlovian bells ring in ears across the county, as heads snap to attention.

But enough nostalgia, which we all know — in the words of Yogi Berra, Simone Signoret and Peter De Vries — isn’t what it used to be.

When one door closes, and Lord knows the MT news building had more than its share of doors, another one opens; one which, in this case, those of us still in this business have gladly walked through.

So, instead of thinking of one year since the Mail Tribune was dropped and shattered like a snow globe on the floor, we look to next month — and the first anniversary of the birth of the Rogue Valley Times.

One year down, another 134 (at least) to go.