Keith Raniere now sits in a detention center in Brooklyn awaiting sentencing. Members of his inner circle pleaded guilty to multiple charges. Nxivm has suspended operations, the Times Union’s Gavin reported.

But there is now also less local news in Albany than there was in 2003, when a newspaper beat reporter first started asking questions about the strange item he saw on the town hall agenda.

The Times Union is the rare local American newspaper that hasn’t changed owners recently. Or in fact, for a very, very long time. William Randolph Hearst bought it in 1925. It’s now one of Hearst’s 24 dailies.

But it did not escape the great shrinking that hit the industry.

Pew Research found that employment in American newsrooms dropped 25% from 2008 to 2018. In newspapers, it dropped 47%.

In 2003, when Yusko first started covering Nxivm, the Times Union had about 122 people in the newsroom. In 2012, when it published Odato and Gish’s four-part investigation, it had 90.

Now, there are about 70 journalists in the newsroom. The Times Union’s Sunday print distribution is 88,000, and it had 1.8 million visitors to its site in the past 28 days, 1.4 million of them unique. The site has a metered paywall.

Metroland closed in 2016, after staff put out one final issue on their own time. The association that serves alt-weeklies has about 100 member publications, down from 135 in 2009.

“It’s sad because we’re going to recognize what local journalism did for us by its absence,” said Hardin, who now lives in St. Louis. He co-wrote a book with Raniere’s former girlfriend, Natalie, titled “The Program: Inside the Mind of Keith Raniere and the Rise and Fall of Nxivm.” It comes out in September.

In spite of a smaller staff, the Times Union has a history as a local watchdog, said Smith, still the editor. So that’s where its resources now go. Since The New York Times story came out, staff closely followed Nxivm members’ trials, revived old coverage and created a podcast.

Gavin was the latest Times Union reporter to pick up the case of Nxivm. The courts and criminal justice reporter lived in Brooklyn for two months to cover the trial.

He likely won’t be the last.

“I think the challenge of an organization that wants to lie about what it’s really about and also keep itself so secret that people have to sign nondisclosure agreements and get punished with litigation, that’s a challenge any journalist worth their salt is gonna see as something worth pursuing,” Lyons said.

And when people tell him that local news is a tough business, he asks them this: “What are you gonna do when we’re not here?”