UPDATE, Feb. 2

San Francisco Chronicle Publisher Bill Nagel emailed the following message to the Outpost on Friday:

We are aware of the situation and saddened by the passing of Mr. Strong.  We are looking into the implications for Chronicle print distribution in the region. At this time, future delivery of the Chronicle in Humboldt County is undetermined, but we are actively exploring solutions.

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Original post:

PREVIOUSLY

• One Killed in Traffic Collision North of Laytonville Yesterday Night

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Print copies of newspapers such as the Times-Standard, San Francisco Chronicle, Press Democrat and New York Times have been unavailable at many local convenience stores and missing from racks this week due to the sudden death of the man who distributed most of those issues to Humboldt County for years. 

Rodney Strong, the 66-year-old Eureka resident who owned and operated R&M Distributors, was killed Monday night in a traffic collision north of Laytonville, the California Highway Patrol confirmed on Thursday.

Eureka resident Janice Lee subscribes to both the Chronicle and the New York Times (only the Sunday editions in print for the latter). Earlier this week she received an email from the New York Times informing her that the company was attempting to secure a new distributor to her home address “due to unforeseen circumstances.”

In the meantime, the email said, copies of the paper will be sent via the U.S. Postal Service starting Monday.

“This does mean that papers will arrive up to 3 days after the publication date however,” the notification continued. “If you would prefer to suspend deliveries given this information, please reply back to this email and I or another agent will make the necessary adjustments.”

Lee also hasn’t received her usual Chronicle delivery since Monday and began to wonder why when she didn’t hear directly from Strong.

“He’s really nice, and usually [when there’s a delivery issue] he’ll let us know with a voicemail, but for the last three days it’s been nothing,” Lee told the Outpost in a phone interview on Thursday. She said she and her husband found out what happened after trying to buy a copy of the Chronicle at Harris and K Market.

“Yeah, we can’t get ‘em,” an employee of the market said when reached by phone yesterday. The market has not received any copies of the Times-Standard, the Chronicle or the New York Times this week, she added. (The employee declined to give her name.) 

“We don’t know when we’ll get them back,” she said. 

If you’re among the many people who’ve switched to reading the news entirely online, you might wonder how many copies of printed newspapers still get sold. 

“Quite a few,” the Harris and K employee said.

On Wednesday evening, the Times-Standard notified readers on social media that until this upcoming Sunday, copies of the paper will be unavailable on racks in Arcata, McKinleyville and Blue Lake. Racks in Rio Dell, Ferndale and Fortuna are not affected, and copies will be available at half a dozen locations across Eureka, Humboldt Hill and Fortuna. 

Times-Standard Publisher John Richmond confirmed via email that home delivery to subscribers remains unaffected, and he expects distribution to be back to normal by Sunday. [Disclosure: Richmond worked at the Outpost’s parent company, Lost Coast Communications, Inc, from 2015-2019, first as general manager and later as CEO.]

On Wednesday, an anonymous Reddit user notified locals on the Humboldt subreddit about Strong’s death, writing, “It is uncertain what will become of his newspaper business or his store at the mall.” Neither that poster nor anyone else the Outpost has managed to reach for this story had any information about whether and when local distribution will resume for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle and USA Today.

An email sent Thursday to the publisher of the Chronicle had received no reply by the time this story was published.

Are you a subscriber to any of these periodicals? Have you received any information about their future availability here in Humboldt County? If so, let us and our readers know in the comments below or email us at news@lostcoastoutpost.com.