Entire Paper's Staff Quits, Starts New Paper

The headlines say that the entire staff of the Manning Times, a 125 year-old newspaper have quit to launch a competing product.

Barry Moore, who is identified as the owner of the South Carolina paper says that "entire staff" may be misleading because there were only "about five or six folks", but a comparison between the Manning Times staff directory and the masthead of the new Clarendon Citizen shows an overlap of nine, or every employee including the receptionist.

Cleve Dowell, who was the managing editor of the former paper, a position he also holds with the new, told WLTX that "the Clarendon Citizen will be a locally owned newspaper" and his co-owner, Jefferey Black is quoted on the Clarendon Citizen's website stressing community involvement and "locally-owned".

It is unclear to me as of this writing, who might actually own the Manning Times. Their website identifies Times Publishing, Inc. as "a South Carolina corporation headquartered in Manning" and the SC Secretary of State's database backs-up this contention, while it's not known who owns the majority of shares.

Remotely-Related: Upcoming Connecticut Suburban Paper War