After 130 years, Bourke's newspaper of record in outback New South Wales will be put to bed for the last time this month.
The Western Herald's three staff were given their termination letters earlier this week.
The paper's editor Frank Povah said the team were shocked after the owner, Navoc, announced the decision to scrap the publication.
He said his biggest concern was that the community would lose its voice after more than a century.
"We are not happy, to say the least. We are a bit shocked," Mr Povah said.
He said after a tough run the paper believed it was starting to pick up pace.
Mr Povah said Bourke was about to experience a population boost off the back of a $60 million abattoir being constructed.
"All papers had been struggling for quite a while, but we believed we were starting to turn a corner."
Home of the unions, Henry Lawson and Breaker Morant
Henry Lawson arrived in Bourke in 1892 at the height of the union movement.
Historian and father of one of the Western Herald's outgoing journalists, Paul Roe, researched the famous bush poet's time there.
"He [Henry Lawson] was a young aspiring writer and he had already been involved in the socialist or the union end of things in Sydney," Mr Roe said.
"When he arrived in Bourke, (it) was absolutely alive with all the union leaders."
He said Lawson had great empathy toward the working man.
"Within a day or so they had recruited him for writing copy for the labour movement in Bourke."
Lawson had also published poetry in the Western Herald under a pseudonym.
"We discovered about eight poems that Henry Lawson had written in the Western Herald under another name," he said.
Mr Roe also believed the famous convicted war criminal Harry 'Breaker' Morant had poems published in the Herald before the second Boer War.
He said Bourke's paper had lasted longer than most, but it was still a sad loss.
"It's been a very, very important organ in terms of keeping community alive and that is very important and I think a sad thing to lose that kind of connection," he said.
Independent paper comeback drives optimism
Journalism lecturer at Deakin University, Dr Kristy Hess, said small papers were usually the first to feel the pinch of the resource drains.
"Clearly the shift to digital has a major effect on newspapers. But often when we have had the collapse of a local masthead like Bourke it's compounded by other factors such as population decline," Dr Hess said.
But she is not convinced small community newspapers were doomed.
Dr Hess said independent papers were making a comeback in Australia and the United States.
"I think that is where the future is," she said.
"In Australia we are already seeing a reverse in a negative circulation trend in the independent sector."
Dr Hess' confidence in the sector was shared by Mr Povah, the outgoing Western Herald editor, who is exploring other options for the historic publication.
"I have probably been knocked down more times than I have been on my feet, one way or another, but I don't tend to lie down for very long," the newspaperman said.
