Banville said he doesn’t think the decision by the Indy staff to unionize was the paper’s death knell.

“It might have changed the timing. It took the debate about the future of the alt-weekly public and it also clearly rankled Lee Enterprises to have to deal with a union. It may have sped things up,” he said.

Banville said “it’s a loss” that the staff wasn’t given time to put together a final issue with advance notice that it would be the last.

“It’s clear (Lee Enterprises) felt they could not have trusted a known last issue being produced,” he said. “I think they decided to not let them do that. They were probably worried what would happen. The decision to just lock everybody out is a fairly typical corporate move. That happens in other businesses like that. It still seems pretty rough and impersonal, but it’s how corporations oftentimes let people go.”

The non-mainstream viewpoints and underground culture of Missoula were often spotlighted by the Indy over the years, Banville said.