ATHENS, Ohio — Adams MultiMedia has shut down The Athens News website, which now redirects traffic to an archive on The Athens Messenger website.
Bruce Mitchell founded The Athens News in 1977, and the paper originally published twice-weekly coverage of Athens and Ohio University. Mitchell passed away in 2025.
The paper remained independent until 2014, when it was sold to Adams MultiMedia (then Adams Publishing Group). The company purchased The Athens Messenger earlier the same year.
Adams MultiMedia owns 213 publications in 20 different states, including seven in Ohio, according to the company website. The company was the third-largest owner of newspapers in the United States last year, according to the annual State of Local News report from Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative.
Closure of the Athens News website, which was not formally announced, followed Adams MultiMedia’s decision in January to cease print publication. At the time, the company said it stopped printing the paper in order to “bring the publication to a more digital forward format.”
The statement itself is among thousands of news and feature articles that are now archived on the Athens Messenger website. Because the Messenger requires a paid subscription to access online stories, articles that were previously free to read on athensnews.com now cost money to access.
Terry Smith, former editor of the Athens News from 1987 to 2020, called for Adams MultiMedia to release an archive of The Athens News for free in an op-ed published by the Independent June 8.
“I hope that Adams MultiMedia at some point considers donating searchable Athens News archival material (most of which is available in issue-by-issue PDF format) to Ohio University Libraries, Athens County Public Libraries and/or the Southeast Ohio History Center,” Smith wrote.
The Independent called Adams MultiMedia Ohio Regional President Clarice Touhey multiple times on Wednesday, June 10, for comment, but could not make contact in time for publication.
