'The Hook' is folding

"The Hook," Charlottesville's popular free weekly magazine found on grocery store and convenience store news stands around the central Virginia area, is folding at the end of September and joining forces with "C-ville Weekly."

NBC-29 published the announcement Friday:

The Hook will publish its final issue on Thursday, September 26, the free weekly newspaper's parent company announced today, and its editorial and business resources will be folded into a bigger, better version of C-VILLE Weekly.

Two-and-a-half years after a parent company was formed to run the two competing weeklies, its owners have decided that the readers, advertisers, and staff would be best served by combining the resources of the two papers to create a more robust print and online hyperlocal media organization.

"Charlottesville is an amazing media market that has allowed two weekly papers to co-exist, basically because people demand high quality local journalism. After taking our time to look at it from nearly every angle, we came to the conclusion that the best way to serve the community was to combine the papers," said Blair Kelly, a partner in the parent company, Charlottesville Publishing Group (CPG). "We think the decision is the best way forward from both a business and an editorial perspective, and we look forward to serving the community with outstanding journalism for another 25 years."

The Hook has built a reputation for feisty, timely local news reporting. The new version of C-VILLE will carry that legacy forward while building on its own 25-year history as an intelligent, progressive journalistic voice for news, arts, and culture in one of the country's great university towns.

NBC-29 has more information about this change in the hard-copy publishing world.