As you might have heard, the Chieftain has suspended publication of its print edition as of July.

That’s not happy news, and I won’t try to pretend otherwise.

However, the Chieftain will continue to generate local news, which we’ll be posting on our website, wallowa.com.

And subscribers to the Chieftain will continue to receive a printed newspaper on Wednesdays — a regional edition of the East Oregonian, which will include as much news from Wallowa County as we can squeeze into it. (It also will feature coverage from throughout Eastern Oregon, including Union, Baker, Grant and Umatilla counties.)

I’ll get back to all that in a moment. But first, some background about the decision to suspend publication of the print edition of the Chieftain:

That decision is one of a number of moves by the Chieftain’s parent company, the EO Media Group, to try to navigate a challenging business climate in which expenses are growing and advertising revenue is shrinking. The column on this page by Kathryn Brown, one of the company’s owners, does a good job of explaining the pressures facing newspapers, especially a smaller paper like the Chieftain.

The bottom line is this: After years of turning a profit, the Chieftain in recent years often has operated at a loss and the EO Media Group no longer can sustain those losses.

But the news still stings: For more than 125 years, the Chieftain has published a print edition. Publishers like George Cheney, Gwen Coffin and Don and Richard Swart worked hard to make sure the paper got out every week, even in the depths of a Wallowa County winter. Staffers worked long hours producing each edition of the newspaper.

And subscribers supported the Chieftain for more than a century, even when the paper got something wrong or did something ill-advised.

The EO Media Group, with its own long background as a family business, bought the paper from the Swart family in 2000. I know this sounds like pandering, but I know enough about EO Media to know that it’s serious about the role a newspaper plays in its community. That’s not the case with every newspaper company.

It’s not out of the question that a printed version of the Chieftain will return someday. But in the meantime, I’m determined to make sure that the Chieftain remains focused on providing as much news as possible about Wallowa County — online and in the pages of the regional East Oregonian.

Details of the regional East Oregonian still are being worked out by the four editors at EO Media Group’s Eastside papers: I think it’s fair to say that the newspaper will be very much a work in progress during the next few weeks.

In the meantime, if you have questions about any of this, feel free to send me an email at mmcinally@wallowa.com. I can’t guarantee that I have all the answers, but I’ll shake my Magic 8 Ball a couple of times to see what it predicts and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Finally, here’s a shout-out to our friends at the Enterprise Liquor Store, who ran a clever ad in June 26 edition, the last printed edition for at least the time being. The ad says: “You can’t hold the same WC Chieftain in your hands anymore, but you can still hold a great beverage.” I laughed out loud.

It’s true that the Chieftain won’t be the same, but we’re going to keep reporting the news. If you have a drink in your hand while you’re reading the news on your laptop or cellphone, be careful about spilling.

Drink — and read — responsibly.