After a ten-year absence, the Whidbey News-Times is moving back to its old stomping grounds in Oak Harbor. (Photo property Garage of Blessings)
You can go home again.
A decade after taking up residence in Coupeville, the Whidbey News-Times is moving its base of operations back to Oak Harbor.
And when the newspaper returns to the Island’s biggest city, it’s landing back in the building from where it came.
The News-Times will occupy the top floor at 800 SE Barrington Drive, right next to the Oak Harbor police station, but this time around reporters and ad salespeople will share the residence.
Back in olden days, like when I was Sports Editor for a hot moment from 1992-1994, the WNT used the entire building, with printing presses camped out in the back half of the ground floor.
The downstairs is now occupied by Garage of Blessings, a non-profit thrift store which relocated there in 2018.
Sound Publishing, the parent company which owns the News-Times, also owns the Barrington building, and has chosen to move the newspaper staff back to Oak Harbor.
The WNT moved its base of operations to Coupeville in early 2010, and has been the anchor of the Coupe’s Village development on S. Main Street ever since.
At first, the News-Times shared office space with its sister paper, the South Whidbey Record, though later the Record returned to its own roots, opening an office on the South end of the Island.
After Sound Publishing purchased the previously-independent Coupeville Examiner, that newspaper also operated out of the S. Main Street location until the paper was discontinued.
Later, after a change in staffing, the Record returned to the building as well.
With the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down most Washington state businesses, and throwing the brakes on print advertising, Sound Publishing combined the News-Times and Record into one paper, which still publishes twice a week.
It’s expected the papers will return to operating as separate publications at some point down the road.
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