Newsday formally ceases all operations

Af­ter 32 years, News­day has closed its doors to the pub­lic, pub­lish­ing its fi­nal on­line edi­tion yes­ter­day.

The move fol­lowed a staff meet­ing with new­ly ap­point­ed liq­uida­tor Maria Daniel, where em­ploy­ees were for­mal­ly in­formed that the com­pa­ny had ceased op­er­a­tions.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, staff were told they were no longer re­quired to re­port to work, pend­ing the wind­ing-up process. Em­ploy­ees will re­main on the pay­roll un­til the end of the month.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, sev­er­al staff mem­bers said they felt a sense of re­lief at fi­nal­ly re­ceiv­ing clar­i­ty af­ter weeks of un­cer­tain­ty.

De­scrib­ing the mo­ment as “bit­ter­sweet,” one staff mem­ber said she was deeply sad­dened by the clo­sure of the com­pa­ny, but wel­comed the res­o­lu­tion af­ter a pro­longed pe­ri­od of anx­i­ety and spec­u­la­tion.

“I’m sad to see it end, but at least now we know,” she said.

News­day staff marked the som­bre oc­ca­sion by com­ing to­geth­er to spend one fi­nal evening in each oth­er’s com­pa­ny, re­flect­ing on years of shared work, friend­ships and mem­o­ries forged in the news­room.

On Jan­u­ary 23, High Court Judge Maris­sa Robert­son ap­proved an ap­pli­ca­tion made late last year by at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Dai­ly News Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of News­day, to wind up its op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny cit­ed on­go­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, dri­ven by steadi­ly de­clin­ing ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue and the last­ing im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Ad­dress­ing staff yes­ter­day, Daniel said the liq­ui­da­tion process has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun and that an as­sess­ment of News­day’s as­sets is now un­der­way.