Cold Spring newspaper closes after 160 years

The Putnam County News & Recorder, which was published weekly in Cold Spring for 160 years, has closed.

The PCNR published its last print edition on Jan. 28 due to what the editor, Rick Pezzullo, at the time called "unforeseen circumstances." It continued to publish a digital edition, but that did not appear on April 8, and the paper's website has not been updated since April 2.

The weekly had been published since April 2024 by a Carmel-based company called Putnam Media Inc. Its owners were described as "a group of Putnam County citizens" but never identified. The company purchased The PCNR and The Putnam County Courier, based in Brewster, from Douglas Cunningham, their former editor.

A source said the investment group voted, 14-2, to dissolve Putnam Media Inc. as of March 31. On April 6, Eric Gross, the senior reporter for The PCNR and Courier, joined Mid Hudson News as its Putnam County bureau chief.

Kathy Kahng, a Kent resident who was identified after the 2024 sale as the papers' general manager, did not return a phone call or email seeking comment. But Getz Obstfeld, one of the 16 investors, said on Tuesday (April 14) that the group had two or three potential buyers and had ceased publication to preserve cash.

"We want to continue the papers and preserve the tradition," said Obstfeld, who has a home in Kent. "We'll see how fast we can make a deal, but I expect it will be within weeks." He said the 16 investors were a mix of "community-minded and media-minded" residents who liked the idea of supporting a nonpartisan news source that served the entire county.

"The papers will be sold at a loss," he said. "But not a single one of us went into it to make money. We intended it as an investment to support the community."

He said the group approached the board of Highlands Current Inc., which publishes this newspaper, but the nonprofit was not interested in buying the publications. Todd Haskell, the board chair, declined to comment.

The loss of the two papers reflects a national trend. According to the State of Local News, a report compiled by Northwestern University, nearly 40 percent of local newspapers have vanished in the past 20 years. That represents at least 3,400 titles, including 130 in 2025. Newspapers have been hit hard by competition from Facebook and Google for local advertisers.

"I've been involved in community journalism since I was 13, and it's a shame what once was a big part of every municipality is fading quickly, and not too many people seem to care," said Pezzullo, who had been on the job for nine months after leaving Examiner Media when it shuttered its print editions, including The Putnam Examiner. Pezzullo referred questions about the closure to Putnam Media Inc.

The PCNR dated to March 1866, when Charles Blanchard founded The Cold Spring Recorder, promising readers "a family journal devoted to the dissemination of general and local news, and the impartial discussion of questions of public interest."

He sold the paper in 1867 to a group of residents who appointed the village postmaster, Sylvester Beers Allis, as editor. Nearly 20 years later, in 1886, a county history reported that The Recorder, now owned by Allis, was "independent in politics, fearless in expression of opinion and has an extensive circulation."

After Allis died in 1891, his heirs sold the paper to Irving McCoy, who ran it for 15 years before handing the operation to Otis Montrose, the principal of the Cold Spring school. Montrose published The Recorder for 29 years; after his death, it passed to W. Osborn Webb, owner of the upstart Putnam County News, who merged the two publications and sold The PCNR in 1939 to pursue a graduate degree in journalism. (According to his obituary, in 1946 Webb was among the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency.)

Jack Ladue, the next owner, ran The PCNR for 44 years until his retirement in 1983. In 1965, ahead of its centennial, he added the motto to the...