JUST ABOUT EVERY week since 1912, the Lake Worth Herald rolled off the presses and into mailboxes and shop racks, delivering local headlines, event listings and, when warranted, sharp jabs at city leaders, courtesy in recent decades of “Pelican Pete,” the weekly’s satirical columnist.
That remarkable 112-year run ended Jan. 2 when the Herald published its final issue, a sad milestone reported under the front-page headline “The End of an Era.’’
“God bless the communities we have served and please understand, it is simply time for us to end the ride,’’ the epitaph ended.
The long ride came to a stop because of the same economic forces that have led to the closures of more than 3,200 newspapers across the United States over the past 20 years. Of the 5,600 remaining papers in January 2024, 80 percent were weeklies, according to a study by Northwestern University.
But like the shuttered dailies, many weeklies are struggling with plummeting ad revenue. The knockout blow for the Lake Worth Herald came from a state law that took effect last year, requiring towing companies to publish their auction notices on a conglomerate website instead of in print newspapers.
“I can’t go on putting it out for nothing,’’ Publisher Mark Easton, whose family has worked at the Herald since 1926 and controlled it since 1946, said in an interview Jan. 3.
Still, the Herald’s closure last week stunned loyal readers who have never known a Thursday when their beloved weekly did not arrive hot off the presses.
“I’ve gotten a lot of emails: In capital letters the word “WHAT” with a lot of exclamation points and ‘do you think you are doing?’” said Judy Easton, who has helped her husband put the paper out since 2001.
“There has to come a time when you've got to say enough is enough,’’ she said. “If we would have had advertising and money coming in, we would not have done this.’’
Founded two years before the start of World War I and only one year after the formation of Palm Beach County, the Herald was Lake Worth Beach’s oldest business.
It began publishing as the Lucerne Herald on May 23, 1912, a year before the settlement’s name was changed and incorporated as the town of Lake Worth. Its first issues were published two years before the arrival of electric lights in town and 13 years before the town became a city.
Created as a marketing tool by developers to lure residents to a town that didn’t yet exist, the Herald grew into a hyperlocal community watchdog providing detailed Lake Worth coverage that larger dailies like The Palm Beach Post and Miami Herald did not.
It pushed for a commission form of government, led efforts to build and stock the city’s first library, lobbied in the 1940s and ’50s to keep the city’s power plant and held power-hungry officials accountable.
In 1924, the paper was published daily for two weeks to post results of the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association tournament. The group’s national headquarters was in Lake Worth.
The Herald also raised eyebrows at times. In 1990, the paper published "anti-crime coupons," a public service ad that encouraged readers to anonymously provide suspects' names to the paper to be turned over to police.
And in 1996, the Herald temporarily filled a vacant city economic development coordinator position, drawing mild criticism from some residents who questioned the paper's ability to remain objective while teaming up with city staff and elected officials to promote Lake Worth.
The Herald also published the Coastal Observer, with editions in Lake Worth Beach, Greenacres, Lantana and Wellington. In the 1990s, circulation was 38,000, a combination of paid subscriptions and free delivery to readers in towns like Palm Springs, Lake Clarke Shores and parts of central Palm Beach County.
In its heyday the Herald employed 35 staffers. Reporters sometimes doubled as advertising agents and carriers, delivering the paper each Thursday to newsstands, public offices, shops and restaurants.
It outlasted many small weeklies and dailies, including the Lake Worth Leader and the Lake Worth Record.
After the Herald’s archives from 1912 to 1970 were digitized, it became a go-to source of Lake Worth history. And in recent years, as staff reductions at The Palm Beach Post led that newspaper to stop regularly covering the city, the Herald became the lone print newspaper consistently reporting about Lake Worth Beach.
“Some people don't have any interest in newspapers. They get all their information from social media. That's just the way it is,’’ Judy Easton said. “My thing about this closing is, who's going to record the history?’’
For the last 98 years, a member of the Easton family worked at the paper, starting in 1926 when Karl J. Easton Sr. — Mark’s grandfather — joined the staff as an advertising manager. In 1941, he and two partners bought the paper and its associated printing business.
Five years later, Easton and his wife, Helen, bought out the partners and took over, the start of a local publishing dynasty.
When Karl Sr. died on Christmas Day 1960, Helen and her son, Karl Jr., shared publishing duties until Helen died in late 1969. When Karl Easton Jr. died in 2001, his son Mark took over.
“I ain’t leaving in a casket,’’ Mark Easton, 70, said the other day, repeating a line he used in the newspaper’s farewell story. “I put 70 years into Lake Worth. I think that's fair enough.’’
Easton said he started pushing a broom at the Herald as a kid, when the offices were at 111 N. Dixie Hwy., the current location of the CVS parking lot. He said he was 11 when he learned to operate the printing press.
In 1969, his father built new Herald offices on South H Street, a location Mark Easton sold in 2016 to Dave Mathews, who opened a microbrewery. (Inside the main entrance to Mathews Brewing is a 19th-century safe that had been a fixture in the Herald’s offices since the newspaper’s early days.)
In 2015, the Herald’s operations moved to a leased space at 1313 Central Terrace in Sunset Ridge off 13th Avenue North.
“We printed every week until 2020 when I went to the hospital for a quadruple bypass and missed a week,’’ Mark Easton said.
The Eastons said their two children have no interest in running the Herald. “They’re smart,’’ Mark said with a laugh.
Into the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Herald had nine staff writers working from its office along with a few stringers. In recent years, the Herald staff consisted of Mark and Judy.
Mark said he brought his notebook and camera to every city government meeting in Lake Worth Beach, Lantana, Greenacres, Palm Springs and Lake Clarke Shores, cities that otherwise draw very little media coverage from larger papers. He said he often arrived at the office every day around 8 a.m. and sometimes went home just before midnight.
Judy said she knew their long hours at the Herald were coming to an end when towing companies reached out to her last year about the new law.
“One of the towing companies that has been with us, the owner said to me, ‘Judy, I know this is going to put you right out of business. And none of us are happy about this. None of us want this to happen,’’’ she recalled.
“We had between 35 and 45 legals a week. When they took the towing companies away we went down to maybe seven,’’ she said.
Mark started quietly telling people over the past few months that the Herald would close in 2025. When people he hadn’t told started calling to ask if the rumors were true, he and Judy knew they had to break the news in person to one of their dear friends, longtime columnist and historian Helen Greene.
“We wouldn't let her hear it from anybody. We went out Monday and told her in person that this would be the last one,’’ Mark said.
“It broke her heart,’’ Judy said.
“She started crying when we were there and then she held back some,’’ he said.
Last week, the Herald was honored on the infamous marquee at Harry's Banana Farm, the Dixie Highway watering hole: “Pelican Pete sez from where I sit it’s time to go fishing!’’
The sign generated even more phone calls from stunned readers.
“It hadn’t been a secret that this was going to be it,’’ Easton said with a laugh. “I’d been telling people it's coming to an end and they’d go ‘yeah, right.’ Well, now all of a sudden it’s ‘What the hell are you doing?’’’
Easton was asked if he’s at all sad that the Herald’s 112-year run is over.
“Not so much sad as a little empty,’’ he replied as a black cat named Pancake sauntered past the wood chair the publisher was sitting on. “I'm going to have to find something to do.’’
Then he smiled and gestured toward his office. Partially blocking the entrance was a hint of his next adventure – a collection of fishing rods.
Beneath the farewell story in the Herald’s final issue on Jan. 2, Pelican Pete flew the coop with a final parting shot at city leaders with references to three projects the Herald has covered: the shuttered beachfront pool, the WMODA museum-apartment project and the Gulfstream Hotel:
“This Pelican is taking flight! Yep, that’s right, gonna find another perch to land upon,’’ the column started.
“Hope LWB can figure out that after 60 years of failure, the beach ain’t the place for a pool. Hopefully WMDA will give people a reason to come to LWB and give a good reason to have the Gulfstream.
“God Bless and good wishes to all!’’
© 2025 ByJoeCapozzi.com All rights reserved.
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.