Thanks to those who signed the petition and helped shine a light on this. It directly led to this story today in the Washington Post.  

WP - In many ways, the erasure of the alternative weekly, whose print and online journalism ranged from nightlife listings to deep investigative work, isn’t unusual. Historians have long warned about the decay of digital news archives, which are increasingly falling victim to mishandling, indifference, bankruptcies and technical failures.

But some of the Hook’s founding journalists suspect the archive didn’t simply expire from natural causes. They think someone paid to kill it.

Story link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/14/hook-charlottesville-vanished-archive/