University of Virginia Library

The Daily Progress

There are no really excellent newspapers in
the Commonwealth of Virginia. There are
some very good ones however, and we think
over the years that our own local newspaper,
the Charlottesville Daily Progress has certainly
been one of these. Given the size of town in
which they operate, the Progress has been
exceptionally good and much better than the
major state newspapers in many other states.

This is why we are disturbed at some of
the policies initiated by the new owners of
the Daily Progress, the Worrill Chain,
operating out of Bristol, Virginia. This chain
owns newspapers in Radford, Pulaski, and
Suffolk, Virginia, papers you have probably
never heard of because this chain apparently
doesn't care about a newspaper's reputation,
only its profit margin.

Certainly no one wants to own a
newspaper which loses money, but that
wasn't the problem at the Progress. It has
always been a profitable newspaper and his
one of the best advertising departments of
any paper we have ever seen. The most
noticeable difference in the new, more
profitable Daily Progress is its size. There are
one-quarter to one-third fewer pages in the
current Progress and the new owners feel
there is a vast market of subscribers at the
University, for the Progress is reporting
Student Council meetings and Intramural
sports scores now, something they rarely did
in the past.

A member of this community used to be
able to read the Progress and get a fair idea of
what was going on in this area, the state,
nation, and world. But with the reduction in
size one must subscribe to at least one other
newspaper to learn what is happening in the
nation and world.

The Daily Progress is the best paper in the
Worrill chain. But it seems as if the new
owners are intent upon making the Progress
the equal of the newspapers they own in
Radford, Pulaski, and Suffolk. Our only hope
is that readers of the new Progress will
become upset enough to stop taking the paper
and advertisers will demand lower rates.
Because the new owners seem to know more
about money than journalism and if the
money could talk in this instance, we think it
would advise them that they are making an
almost criminal mistake.