Petersburg Pilot -

Today, Feb. 8, 2024, the Petersburg Pilot turns 50 years old, and the occasion calls for some reflection on what it takes for a newspaper like ours to survive fifty years and what it takes to carry onward.

In last week’s Yesterday’s News column we noted publisher Glenn Luckie’s description of the conditions in 1974 that brought the 62-year publishing run of the Petersburg Press to an end. He wrote about not being able to withstand “rising expenses outstripping declining revenue” and the fatal effect of local merchants reducing their local advertising.

The early seventies were a hard time to ru...