That’s what a concerned reader of the longtime paper came to our offices to tell us this morning. I called Jeannette Crumpler, whose new book we profiled in June’s Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate and who has freelanced for the White Rocker for the last 12 years, to ask if she knew whether the newspaper is still in business. She didn’t know, but she told me that publisher Retta Hanie had worried about the future of the newspaper when she lost her managing editor (a job listing for a new editor was posted in May 2009). Crumpler also mentioned that the 65-year-old White Rocker‘s circulation had “dropped drastically” when the White Rock Weekly recently came on the scene; the May 2009 listing mentions a circulation of 2,000 plus another 3,000 placed at local businesses.
I called both the main phone number for the White Rocker and another number Crumpler gave me, and both phone numbers were out of service. Though I haven’t seen a new edition of the White Rocker in some time, I don’t know whether that means the newspaper has indeed shut down, or whether there has simply been a phone number switch.