Schoharie News to buy Stamford's Mountain Eagle

The Schoharie News's new office on Schoharie's Main Street. Photo from the Schoharie News's Facebook page.

The Schoharie News, a local newspaper that launched in 2013 as an online-only news site, announced this week that they are in the process of buying the 34-year-old Mountain Eagle, a print newsweekly based in the Delaware County town of Stamford.

Here's the announcement, which was posted on the Facebook pages of both papers: 

The Schoharie News was founded in 2013 by enterprising young reporter Timothy Knight (now a freelance reporter for the Watershed Post and other local outlets). Since its founding, the site has gone through several changes of ownership. Knight briefly sold it to Robert Panico in 2014, soon bought it back, and shut it down in 2015 when the hard financial realities of the news business proved to be too much for the scrappy news outlet. (Editor's note: We feel your pain, Tim.)

Earlier this year, Middleburgh village mayor Matthew Avitabile bought the site and revived the newspaper as a monthly. Avitabile, now the Schoharie News's publisher, plans not to run for another term as village mayor.

The Mountain Eagle, currently owned by the local newspaper chain Columbia-Greene Media, recently had its editorial staff cut as part of the parent company's cutback on spending at local weeklies throughout the chain.