The announcement today that the King County Journal will cease publication (last issue on Jan. 21) marks the end of a sad chapter in the region's mass media history. I worked for the company for a few years back in the 1990s, when the paper changed its name from the Bellevue Journal American and when the Internet appeared on the landscape.

Back then I was a sports writer, not a web editor. I remember, in 1996, talk with others in the newsroom who were equally mystified at how little the paper's management did to build a Web presence. When you consider yourself Microsoft's hometown newspaper, as the Journal did at the time, you have an opportunity that few other daily newspapers could match. But little energy and fewer resources were dedicated to the online product. Sadly, the web site looks about the same today as it did when it launched 10 years ago.

The new owners, Black Press Ltd., cited the previous owners’ mistakes – “particularly a decision to cut the marketing budget” – as reasons to shutter the operation. I’m not sure if new media development would be considered “marketing” in this case, but it does in my book.

Some observers will chalk this up to the pending demise of all newspapers. But from my point of view, it says more about the previous ownership’s failures than it does about the changing media landscape. After all, this is a newspaper that lost money during the delirious 1990s of the dot-com boom, a time when other newspapers were swimming in cash.

R.I.P. Journal American/King County Journal