Mr. Butz is also awash in grief, having lost his wife, Cecilia Kuhn — who was a drummer in the Bay Area feminist punk band Frightwig — in 2017. And as I spent time watching him put out his first issue of the paper, he told me that while he was happy to be saving something special to the community, the endeavor was also saving him.

“She would be proud of me,” he said.

[Read the full story here.]

Local newspapers at their best knit together communities and connect generations of families, and that is how longtime residents of Downieville and surrounding Sierra County described The Messenger. Each one expressed great relief and gratitude that Mr. Butz had saved the paper.

It was intensely familiar to me: My first job after college was editor and publisher of a weekly in Vermont, The Essex Reporter, which, thankfully, is still in business even as nearly 1,800 local papers have closed since 2004, according to a study published by the University of North Carolina. The best advice I received then was quite simple: Get the names of as many kids as possible into each issue, from honor rolls to Little League games to school plays.

The story touched many readers, who responded with notes to us, or to Mr. Butz directly, with offers to contribute to the paper or asking how they could subscribe.

One reader who took special notice of our story was Ken Garrett, an entertainment lawyer in Beverly Hills. Hanging from the wall in his office is a front page of The Messenger, dated Dec. 1, 1883. As it turns out, one of his ancestors had been an owner of the paper.