The Democrat and Chronicle no longer needed the much larger space in the building, which included the area that formerly held the printing presses before 1996, which was expensive to maintain.

[9] In 2010, The Democrat and Chronicle ranked number one among US newspapers in market penetration, the percentage of readers in a metro area who read in print or online.

[8][11] The Democrat and Chronicle, along with its parent company Gannett, was sued in October 2019 by a former paperboy who accused the newspaper of enabling a former district manager to sexually abuse him in the 1980s.

[citation needed] Gannett COO Michael G. Kane then sent the original claimant a letter indicating no evidence had been found and they were "closing out" the matter.

In July 2022, Gannett defense attorneys notified the court of their intent to file a motion to have the former paperboy's Child Victims Act cases taken "out of the state court system and turn them over to the New York Workers' Compensation Board"[16] stating that the 11-14-year-old paperboys should have applied for workman's compensation at the time of their injuries in the 1980s, or in 2019 upon enactment of the CVA as it is a simple online process.

Nearly three years after the first lawsuit filing, in July 2022, Gannett (the parent company and publisher of the Democrat & Chronicle) defense attorneys notified the court of their intent to file a motion to have the former paperboys' Child Victims Act cases taken "out of the state court system and turn them over to the New York Workers' Compensation Board" stating that the 11–14-year-old paperboys should have applied for workman's compensation at the time of their injuries in the 1980s or upon enactment of the CVA in 2019.

On July 26, 2024, this demand of Gannett, received and accepted fully by Judge Deborah Chimes, was reversed, by the Fourth Judicial Department of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court.