Eighty years ago, the country continued a slow, unsteady climb out of the Great Depression, and businesses that had made it to 1937 still had no guarantee of surviving.

These tough conditions extended to the newspapers which served Gloucester and Mathews counties. As the story has come down to us, the Gloucester Gazette and the Mathews Journal, prodded by the banks that held their lines of credit, more or less had to combine. And so, on Nov. 11, 1937, the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal made its appearance.

The new paper had good roots: the Journal dating from 1905 or earlier, and the Gazette from 1919. The combination brought together two publications strong on news coverage. It reduced their production costs and helped them to hang on until times—and the size of each issue—finally started to improve after World War II.

In the intervening decades, we have experienced great times, good times, bad times and deeply worrying times. The national economy is currently on an...