Kentucky Sunday-Only Paper Folds After 20 Months

By: Mark Fitzgerald The unusual Sunday-only free paper that called itself "A Voice for Northern Kentucky" has been silenced.

On its Web site over the weekend, the co-owner and the publisher of The Sunday Challenger announced in separate stories that the Covington, Ky., paper was ceasing operations immediately.

Co-owner Bill Butler, the hotel mogul who launched the Sunday Challenger on the Fourth of July in 2004 said in his column that the paper was doomed when the Cincinnati Enquirer increased its coverage and advertising efforts, and when Enquirer parent Gannett acquired the Community Recorder weeklies in northern Kentucky.

"I would like to duck this decision, because I am a bit embarrassed; but I won't," Butler said. "The facts suggest that the economic projections upon which we relied in beginning The Sunday Challenger were unrealistic. After eight months of study and preparation and 20 months of publishing, we achieved a level of advertising income sufficient to cover only 40 percent of the operating expenses of the publication."

With increased competition from the consolidated daily and weeklies, he added, "There is no way to believe that advertising rates will support the costs of 'A Voice for Northern Kentucky' in the foreseeable future."

The Sunday Challenger home-delivered 60,000 copies to households in Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties with another 5,000 copies distributed in racks and store drops, according to a Feb. 20 report in The Cincinnati Post.

President and Publisher Donald J. Then said in his Web column that the closure was "a matter of pure economics."

"Fellow journalists and publishers have told me candidly that what Bill Butler commissioned me to do nearly two years ago -- digging this newspaper out of the ground from scratch -- has been a remarkable journey and accomplishment," Then wrote. "Along the way we managed to stay afloat (I thank our advertisers, financiers and contributors for that), and in our short life we've won 47 awards (twice running first place General Excellence in our classification among Kentucky newspapers)."

Both Then and Butler said the newspaper had forced the Enquirer and its weeklies to improve the coverage and advertising servicing of northern Kentucky.

"At the time we launched The Sunday Challenger, coverage of Northern Kentucky had been reduced to a few articles in the Metro section in the Enquirer," Butler said. "The future of the Post was and still is uncertain. ... Since we began, the Enquirer has tripled its sales and marketing staff, and substantially increased its editorial platform, too, in the Northern Kentucky office. They acquired The Recorder papers including the Boone, Kenton, and Campbell County Recorders."

Then said he hoped the Gannett papers would continue that level of coverage.

"From where I sit, it's truly important that you don't short-change the public's right to know with wire-service tripe to squeeze every dollar you can for corporate profit," Then wrote. "Do what great and free news organizations are suppose to do-tell the truth, find the faults, uncover the liars and cheats, better lives, fix problems, celebrate achievement, and emphasize the good and gleaming that shines in this northern-most sector of the Bluegrass State."