Gainesville area newspaper closing doors

A High Springs newspaper that has published since 1952 is hanging its future on “a financial angel” to front $120,000 so that it can operate until December 2012 — otherwise, it has already published its last issue.

On the website of The North Florida Herald, the second oldest business still operating in High Springs, editor and publisher Ronald Dupont, Jr., wrote, “Unless a financial angel comes through our doors in the next two days, The Herald will close.”

The community paper covered Alachua, Newberry, High Springs and Fort White in north-central Florida — the towns that flank the greater Gainesville market.

The Herald is just the latest in a trend for ink-and-newsprint papers across the nation as news consumers and advertisers are finding each other on Internet news journals, like Historic City News, and social media websites.

The North Florida Herald that is in the stands now, published November 27, 2011, will likely be the final issue — no issue will be published this week, Dupont wrote.