North Jefferson News

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The North Jefferson News was a weekly newspaper based in Gardendale. The paper's offices were located at 1110 Main Street in The Garden shopping center. The paper was distributed each Wednesday, and covered the northern part of Jefferson County, including the cities of Gardendale, Fultondale, Morris, Kimberly, Warrior and Pinson. The NJN also covered parts of southwest Blount County, including Hayden and Locust Fork, until 2016.

Established in 1970 as a weekly, The North Jefferson News was soon acquired by Cullman Times publisher Robert Bryan and made part of his Bryan Newspapers holdings. That group of papers was sold in 1997 to Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc, a Montgomery-based company which owns newspapers, websites and niche publications which serve more than 150 communities throughout the United States. A second Saturday edition was added in 2007, but the edition was discontinued at the beginning of 2012.

On July 11, 2008 the newspaper offices moved to 1110 Main Street. They were formerly located at 175 Bell Street, where the Gardendale Historical Society is currently located.

Danielle Cater (nee Pelkey) started working at the paper in 2003 and was the general manager from 2011 to 2016. Robert Carter was the former sports/digital editor and later the associate editor; he retired in 2016, and was replaced by Erik Harris.

Rachel Davis was appointed editor and general manager effective as of September 23, 2016.

Shutdown

Like much of the newspaper industry, years of declining readership led to cutbacks of staff and pages per edition for The North Jefferson News. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused many businesses to close temporarily, including many of the paper's advertisers, which further hurt revenues.

In the paper's April 22, 2020 edition, fifty years after its founding, CNHI announced that The North Jefferson News would close and "merge" with The Cullman Times, which would publish a special edition each Wednesday with news from the NJN's former coverage area. Davis and Harris, the sole remaining staffers, were put on what CNHI called "indefinite furlough."

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