FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas (Covering Katy News) — The Fort Bend Star, a community newspaper that has served Fort Bend County for nearly half a century, is closing its doors, its editor announced Wednesday — the latest casualty in a wave of community newspaper shutdowns sweeping the Houston region and the country.
Editor Ken Fountain confirmed the closure in a farewell column, saying the move was "not entirely unexpected" given the broader collapse of the local news industry. Wednesday's edition was the paper's last as more local publishers are finding their biggest competitors for advertising dollars are not each other but Meta and Google.
The Star has covered Sugar Land, Missouri City, Stafford, Richmond, Rosenberg and surrounding Fort Bend County communities since 1978. It was purchased in 2022 by Street Media, a California-based company.
The Leader, a sister publication that covered the Houston Heights, Garden Oaks, Oak Forest and surrounding north Houston neighborhoods, also closed. The Leader stopped printing last month and ceased updating its website Wednesday.
"You probably know that the media industry, particularly the newspaper business, has been in dire straits for many years, and that has been accelerating recently," Fountain said. "A while back, I read a story in which it was reported that two newspapers on average close every week in the United States. And it's not just print media that is in trouble — once cutting-edge digital news sites like BuzzFeed and Vice have also felt the pinch. Just two weeks ago, CBS News announced that it was shutting down its venerated radio service, which had been the home of such journalism luminaries like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and many others."
Fort Bend Star Founder Built a Half-Century Legacy
Fountain, who joined the Star in November 2022, credited the paper's founder, the late Beverly "Bev" Carter, with building a publication that served the community for five decades. Carter founded the paper in the mid-1970s after working as a journalism teacher and newspaper advisor at Hastings High School in Alief. She died in 2013. Her tenure at the Star was not without controversy. The Star changed ownership twice after her passing before Street Media acquired it.
Fountain pointed to the well-documented forces accelerating local news closures — the loss of advertising revenue to tech giants such as Google and Facebook, whose parent company is Meta, and the failure of legacy media leadership to adapt quickly enough to the digital shift.
Fort Bend County — which Fountain described as one of the most diverse counties in the nation and expected to reach 2 million residents by 2040 — is a market he argued deserves strong local news coverage.
Houston Landing Also Closes as Regional News Crisis Grows
The Star and Leader closures are part of a broader regional collapse in local journalism. Last spring, Houston Landing, a nonprofit digital newsroom that launched in February 2023, also shut down after its board voted to cease operations, citing an inability to build revenue streams beyond its initial seed funding. The closure resulted in layoffs for all 43 employees.
The Landing had been funded by major philanthropic organizations including the Houston Endowment, Arnold Ventures, the Kinder Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Its government accountability reporting, education coverage and immigration journalism had distinguished it during its brief run, according to Editor in Chief Manny Garcia.
"Although Houston Landing launched with significant seed funding, it has been unable to build additional revenue streams to support ongoing operations," the board wrote in a letter posted to the newsroom's website.
136 Newspapers Have Closed Nationally in the Past Year
The three closures reflect a national pattern. As of October, approximately 136 newspapers across the United States had shut down in the preceding 12 months, according to a report from Northwestern University.
Local News Outlets Turn to Paywalls and Reader Subscriptions to Survive
Facing that reality, news organizations across the country have increasingly turned to reader revenue to survive, returning to a tried and true model of the pre-digital era of news publications when newpapers of record charged for their product. Now many outlets have adopted soft paywalls, allowing readers to access a limited number of articles each month before being asked to subscribe — a model designed to balance audience growth with financial sustainability. Others have moved to hard paywalls, requiring a subscription for any access to content.
The Texan, a statewide news outlet, operates behind a hard paywall and like Covering Katy News accepts no government funding, competing directly against better-funded organizations such as the Texas Tribune, which relies heavily on donations, grants and major foundation support. The contrast illustrates the range of funding models outlets are experimenting with as the industry searches for a path forward.
"Journalism is vitally important in building community, allowing voters to make informed decisions and holding the government accountable," said Matthew Watkins, editor in chief of the Texas Tribune. "But it's expensive to produce, so it needs people who value it to subscribe to local publications and donate to nonprofits that are doing good work."
Who we are: Covering Katy News is independently owned and operated by professional journalists with more than 50 years of combined experience. Unlike many other local media outlets, we do not accept special purpose district funding — such as from MUDs, drainage districts or other taxing entities — nor do we accept funding from any government source, whether municipal, county, state or federal. We are self-sustaining — no outside investors — supported entirely by local advertisers. Our owner and publisher, Dennis Spellman, and his staff live locally, so we understand local issues. Since 2022, Spellman has also served county residents in a communications role for Fort Bend County Pct. 3. Since our founding in 2011, our editorial decisions have been made independently — and that will never change.