Imagine showing up for work one morning, being locked out of the office and having your email and website shut down. That’s what happened to 12 employees last Tuesday at the Missoula Independent, a 27-year-old alternative newsweekly based in Missoula, Montana. The decision was made by Lee Enterprises, the newspaper’s owner for the last year-and-a-half, but there was no warning. Employees were told they would receive salary and benefits through October 10, and instructed to contact the Missoulian, a Lee Enterprises-owned daily newspaper, to make arrangements to collect their personal belongings.

“We came to work this morning and were told we weren’t allowed in the building because effective immediately the Indy has been shut down,” said Ariel LaVenture in a Missoula Current article on the abrupt closure. “At this point, we’re all in shock. It’s a really sad day for Missoula. It’s absolutely heartbreaking for the community.

Earlier this year, employees of the Missoula Independent voted to unionize, creating the Missoula News Guild. Over the summer, Lee told the union it would have to lay off two-thirds of the staff or shut down the paper, reports the Missoula Current. During negotiations, the union made a counteroffer to avoid job cuts or a closure, and union representatives were optimistic a compromise could be reached.

Derek Brouwer, staff reporter for the newspaper, was vocal about the news on Twitter. Here is one of his tweets last week:

In the Missoula Current, Brouwer said that members of the community have been supportive.

“There’s been a lot of community members who have reached out today asking me what they can do, and in some cases, telling me what they plan to do. I’m not sure what the ramifications would be for me if I participated in any of that,” Brower said.

Lee Enterprises purchased the newspaper from Matt Gibson, owner of the Indy since 1997. He is now the general manager for three Lee-owned publications in western Montana – the Missoulian, Ravalli Republic and the Independent. In a story posted on the Missoulian’s website, Gibson said the newspaper had consistently lost money and was not financially sustainable.

“I had hoped that by selling it to Lee Enterprises we would be able to create collaborative approaches and find new efficiencies to turn it into a profitable business,” Gibson said in the article. “Unfortunately, our efforts were unsuccessful, and the Indy continued to lose money.”

As part of the closure, the MissoulianNews.com, the website for the Missoulian Independent, is no longer accessible, nor are any of its archived stories. Attempting to access the site redirects readers to the Missoulian online.

Based in Davenport, Iowa, Lee Enterprises was founded in 1890. The newspaper change owns 46 daily newspapers, a joint interest in two other newspapers, digital products and 300 specialty publications in 49 markets across 21 states. According to the Lee Enterprises website, the chain’s newspapers have daily circulation of 0.9 million and Sunday circulation of 1.4 million. Lee claims to reach more than 3 million readers daily with 25 million unique monthly visitors to its digital properties.

Insider Take:

Some are saying Lee planned to close the paper down since its purchase in 2017. Others are saying it was the unionizing of the newspaper that was its downfall. Still others are saying it is an industry trend with newspapers like The Village Voice and the Baltimore City Paper shutting their doors. Regardless of the reason, it is hard to fathom a large corporation like Lee closing its operation without some forewarning to its employees and to the community. That action seemed unnecessary and destructive to the Lee Enterprises brand as well as to the employees and community who loved the Missoula Independent.