The Baker City Herald has had three owners in the past five years.

Which is one less than the number of desks I’ve sat in front of as the Herald’s editor in the past six years.

But that’s hardly the extent of the upheaval.

Since July the Herald has not published a print newspaper.

We contribute stories each week to the East Oregonian, which is printed on Wednesdays and distributed by mail to Herald subscribers.

But the vast majority of Baker County news — often half a dozen or more new stories each day, including sports, features and opinion — is available on our website, www.bakercityherald.com.

The pace of the changes at the Herald since 2018 likely lacks a precedent during our 154 years in business.

(The Herald, which started as the Bedrock Democrat in May 1870, is a bit older, officially, than Baker City itself. Although the city was platted in 1865 and chosen as Baker County seat in 1866, it wasn’t incorporated until 1874.)

I’ve been at the paper for 32 years.

And for the first 26 of those years the biggest change, by a wide margin, happened in 2009, when the Herald, which was then printed on weekdays, dropped two of its weekly issues.

But we stayed in our office on the west side of First Street, between Court and Washington avenues.

Until the spring of 2018, when Western Communications sold the building and moved the Herald to rental quarters near Old Post Office Square at Auburn and Resort.

A year later Western Communications dissolved, and the Herald was bought by another venerable and family-owned newspaper company, EO Media Group.

We moved in the summer of 2021 to the Pythian Castle, the historic tuffstone building, less than a block from the old Herald office, that Heidi Dalton has restored with such care.

There we stayed until late June of this year.

EO Media Group closed the office as part of a cost-cutting campaign that included ending the Herald’s weekly print issue and also eliminated the jobs of two reporters.

Since then the staff has consisted of two — myself and Lisa Britton, who puts together the weekly Go! magazine arts and entertainment guide and other special publications as well as writing stories for the Herald.

We work from home.

Which is convenient, since we’re married.

My formerly agonizing commute of one mile is measured in steps.

And now the Herald has a new owner.

Carpenter Media Group, based in Mississippi, has bought EO Media Group’s newspapers, including those in Northeastern Oregon that, like the Herald, contribute stories to each weekly East Oregonian — The Observer in La Grande, the Blue Mountain Eagle in John Day, the Wallowa County Chieftain, the East Oregonian in Pendleton and the Hermiston Herald.

Carpenter Media Group owns more than 250 newspapers, magazines and websites in the U.S. and Canada. Most are in relatively small communities. Many have far fewer residents than Baker City but continue, under Carpenter, to publish print issues.

You can find the complete roster at carpentermediagroup.com.

The purchase was announced last week. I haven’t met anyone from Carpenter Media Group, but the owner and chairman, Todd Carpenter, and the president and CEO, Tim Prince, talked with EO Media Group employees during a virtual meeting.

I am optimistic about the Herald’s future.

My enthusiasm stems not only, or even primarily, from what Carpenter and Prince said about the purchase.

I’m as interested in what the company has done — which is to run newspapers in towns that are not so different from Baker City, in size and geographic location.

I appreciate in particular what Carpenter sees as the role of community newspapers — the very role, I believe, that the Herald has had for more than a century and a half.

“We know our readers depend on us for timely reporting of facts so they can be informed and contribute to improvement of the places they live,” Carpenter said. “We pledge to work hard to meet that obligation as we simultaneously work to serve small and medium-size business with marketing programs that strengthen the business, the community and thus the newspaper. We are all in it together and have a vested interest in strengthening the institutions that make us a community, beginning with its newspaper.”

The key word, it seems to me, is the next to last one.

Its.

I agree with Carpenter that in a small town the newspaper’s relationship is symbiotic.

I think of the newspaper, although it’s a private business, as belonging to the community in something like the way that institutions such as the schools and the library and the churches belong.

This relationship, it seems to me, carries an inherent responsibility.

This is why the Herald reports, among much else, about how public officials and agencies spend our tax dollars, and the actions they take on our behalf.

These issues are of little or no interest to people who live elsewhere.

But to our readers they matter a great deal.

This is why in our pages, and on our website, you will read not often about U.S. presidents or national celebrities but very frequently about the neighbor kid who plays sports at Baker High School, or the friend who has an interesting hobby or owns a popular business.

Why we consider an artistic second-grader as newsworthy as a county commissioner.

Why we care a lot about cows — both the ones that graze in fields and the ones that hunters pursue in the woods each fall.

Many people have asked Lisa and I over the past few months how we adjusted to the dramatic changes this summer.

We tend to answer in similar ways.

Like our readers we lament the loss of the print paper and pine for its possible return.

But mostly our jobs haven’t changed.

We still spend the bulk of our time talking to Baker County residents and writing about what they’ve been doing, what they’ve seen, what they think, what makes them laugh and cry.

As those who came before us did, dating back almost to the Civil War, we chronicle their triumphs and tragedies, treating as important both the memorable event and the one that will soon be forgotten by most.

Both are part of the community, and of its story.

Between us we’ve been doing this work for more than half a century — Lisa started at the Herald 22 years ago.

I’m optimistic that our new owners share our feelings about community newspapers — their purpose, their potential and their unique role in the towns they serve.