Since at least 1851, the city of Middletown has been served by a daily newspaper that was printed locally, either in - or at least very near - downtown Middletown. That’s about to change.

It was announced last week that the huge printing presses at the Times Herald Record’s Town of Wallkill printing plant will be silent after the May 10 editions are printed. The entire printing operation will be shifted to Rockaway, NJ, home of The (Bergen) Record. The New Jersey plant will likely be taking on the THR’s commercial printing customers like Catholic New York, the Sullivan County Democrat and - yes - The Wallkill Valley Times. We’ve been told that change will take place before May 10.

It’s a growing trend in the daily newspaper business, that production operations be consolidated as more and more of them are absorbed by larger companies. None of the region’s daily newspapers - The Times Herald Record, Poughkeepsie Journal, Daily Freeman of Kingston or the Journal News of Westchester are printed locally. In fact, three of the four are now part of Gannett and will all be printed at the same New Jersey printing plant. The Freeman is printed in Troy, NY.

There’s bittersweet irony in all of this, beyond the 90 or so production jobs at Ballard Road that will now be lost. Printing miracles have been performed in Middletown. The Middletown Daily Record, launched in 1956, was a pioneer in offset printing. It was the first daily newspaper to use what became known as cold type, rather than the traditional hot letterpress, and was tabloid-sized, a rarity in those days. A few years later, it was sold to James H. Ottaway Sr., owner of the rival Middletown Times-Herald and the two papers were merged. The Ottaway family, through its philanthropy, has left an indelible mark on the Hudson Valley.

The paper has since changed hands a number of times before last year’s merger that led it into the Gannett chain. Along the way were other technological innovations that helped boost the paper’s popularity. It was running color pages long before the stately New York Times added color presses, and an idea for an extra edition, spun at Woodstock in 1969 led to its Sunday edition. In the 1990s, the production was moved to a state-of-the-art printing plant in the Town of Wallkill.

Changes in the printing industry are not confined to journalism. Large and small printing shops are also disappearing. In a span of 30 years, Walden lost three printers: Walden Printing (which once printed the Wallkill Valley Times), Trade Composition Service and finally Ciardullo printing disappeared from the local landscape. Business cards, wedding menus and personalized stationery can now be ordered online and delivered to your location within a few days. It’s a simple fact that larger places can do it bigger, faster and cheaper.

We can change the way we deliver the news, and we will adapt to these changes, as we always do. The mission of journalists - whether they work for large media companies or small weekly newspapers - remains the same. In the words of the American Press Institute, “the purpose of journalism is thus to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.”

That mission will never change, whether the instrument is a quill pen or an iPad.