The Sunday Challenger, serving Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties in Northern Kentucky, USA, since July 4, 2004, published and distributed its final edition that day. Facing what appeared to be at least another couple of years of financial losses, the owners decided that enough red ink was enough, and closed the publication down.

Many will ask, well, if the newspaper was so great, why did it close? It closed, in the simplest terms, because major advertisers could not be convinced that it was in their best interests to move their advertising dollars from the competing dailies and community newspapers, all owned by the Gannett company. In that respect, we lost, fair and square.

But in reporting the news and giving Northern Kentuckians a voice, we succeeded in a blaze of glory. In less than two years of actual publication--20 months to be exact--The Sunday Challenger won 47 awards from the Kentucky Press Association for journalism and presentation excellence, including first-place general excellence in our classification for both years.

While the affirmation and validation of our efforts by other professional journalists who judged the Kentucky contests was rewarding, so was the response from our readers. We had constant feedback from readers--by email, by phone, by postal mail. Most of it good, some occasionally critical. But we knew we were being read, and that we were making a difference.

So while this will be considered by most a blip on the screen in the history of newspaper journalism in Kentucky or Greater Cincinnati, I am creating a spot on this, my personal Web site, so that The Sunday Challenger will live on, at least in memory. Once the ChallengerNKY.com Web site with more than a million page views annually has been turned off, there will still be a place--at least in cyberspace--where the Challenger's legacy will be remembered.

Let me first thank the most talented and most dedicated staff of news professionals I have ever worked with, and perhaps ever will again: editors Michael Jennings, Tricia Suit, Larry Nager and Vicki Prichard; reporters Jason Feldmann, Lew Moores, Jeanne Houck, Amanda Van Benschoten and Jeff Fichner; a true star in his profession, cartoonist Dan Ackley; columnists Brian Patrick, Andy Furman, Tom Gamble and Marilyn Harris; design gurus David Hermann, Molly O'Connor, Trina Wieland and Will Siemer; and Trina Kinstler, who performed a combination of sports reporting and web-related functions for the Challenger.

What I will remember most about our last day in the office, Friday, Feb. 17, was Donald Then, the publisher, delivering the sad news at 1 p.m. that we were closing at the end of the day, and Trina Kinstler, despite being visibly shaken after being told--like most of the rest of the staff--that that was her last day, she stayed and finished her usual Friday afternoon duties. Trina made sure all of the stories that were in the upcoming Sunday paper had been posted to the Web site for publication early Sunday morning. I even told her I'd finish up for her, but she stayed on and finished. That captured the spirit and the dedication of The Sunday Challenger staff better than anything else I could have composed here.

Donald Then, who thought he let everyone down by not being able to turn the financial fortunes of the business around, should hold his head high, knowing that he gave his all and gave a group of unemployed or underemployed newspaper professionals a chance to prove what they could do. Everyone who leaves the Challenger does so having benefitted from the experience, and Don is to thank for that.

Thanks are also due to Bill Butler, Northern Kentucky businessman and civic leader who believed as long as 20 years ago that the region should have its own newspaper. Bill was willing to put his money where his mouth was, and even though the Challenger shut down, he achieved his goal of raising the level of attention that the media pays to Northern Kentucky. By responding to the competition we posed, the existing media now all know where Northern Kentucky is on the map and why they should pay attention to it. And that will serve the region's interests for years to come.

And as for me, I know that as I sit and write this on Sunday, February 19, that I am going to miss my colleagues tremendously. I am going to miss the talent and the professionalism. Thank you all for what you have meant to Northern Kentucky, and dare I say, what you have meant to me. I hope that leaving this tribute to what we accomplished as a team on the World Wide Web will give you something to show your friends, colleagues, and maybe even future employers, about what you accomplished here.

Here are some links to coverage about The Sunday Challenger in other media:

Business Courier: Finding a new voice
March 12, 2004

CityBeat: They don't rest on Sunday (column by Ben L. Kaufman)
August 4, 2004

RuralJournalism.org: Northern Kentucky developer creating own niche with free Sunday newspaper (research project by Jessica Fisher)
Fall 2005

BluegrassReport.org: Sunday Challenger to Close Doors Immediately
Feb. 18, 2006

Challenger freelance writer Howard McEwen's personal blog: Weekend Roundup
Feb. 19, 2006

Business Courier: N. Ky. Sunday paper folds
Feb. 20, 2006

Editor and Publisher: Kentucky Sunday-Only Paper Folds After 20 Months
CityBeat: Farewell to The Challenger (column by Ben L. Kaufman)
Feb. 22, 2006