OIL CITY, Pennsylvania — The Derrick will be no more.

Derrick Publishing Company, publisher of the Derrick and the News-Herald, announced Thursday that it will cease publication. Employees were told the decision was driven by the long-term decline in support for newspapers, along with regional losses in employment, retail activity, advertising revenue, and readership.

The last day of publication of both newspapers will be March 20.

Founded in 1871 as the Daily Derrick by C.E. Bishop & Company, the Derrick earned an international reputation for the quality of its reporting. Its correspondents’ dispatches and wire stories were circulated around the world, including its authoritative publication of oil spot prices — set in Oil City — as well as widely used annual statistical compendiums.

By 1871, this region was firmly established as oil country, a transformation that began just 13 years earlier when Edwin Drake struck oil in what had been the rugged wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a land of dense forests and more bears than people.

People who lived here in the mid-18th century always noticed the green-black oil that lingered on the top of Oil Creek. Aside from using it for a primitive medical salve, locals mostly ignored its presence. 

At the time, the nation stood on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, but meeting the growing demand for reliable illuminating oil posed a major challenge. Whale oil had become prohibitively expensive and whaling was rapidly depleting the population. Alternatives such as lard oil, tallow oil, and coal oil distilled from shale existed, but none were yet abundant or affordable enough to meet the country’s needs.

The shortage of........

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