Just over a year ago, Dan Robrish, 39, quit his job covering the crime beat for the Associated Press in downtown Philadelphia. After 11 years, he had had enough.

“When you’re 25 (years old), it’s really exciting to be dealing with this big breaking news, but after a while, its this unrelenting drumbeat of blood and gore,” he told Editor and Publisher.

Elizabethtown, Pa hadn’t had a newspaper since February 2009. The Elizabeth Town Chronicle shuttered its windows when its parent company, The Journal Register Co., went broke.

Having always wanting to be his own boss, Robrish relocated to the borough, pop. 12,000.

Now he’s The Elizabethtown Advocate‘s  publisher, editor, reporter, advertising director, circulation manager and delivery boy (he’s still trying to figure out how to reset the old newspaper boxes) all rolled into one.

Robrish spent all the money he had to start the 600-circulation, six-page broadsheet last February, but says the paper’s close to profitability and is confident about his chances, even in these uncertain times.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that the town’s three major industries — a college, a retirement home and a chocolate factory — are virtually recession-proof.