Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
The news hit me hard. Though I was never a true “newspaperman,” I wrote for many papers over the last 46 years.
Last Wednesday morning, the announcement came; newspapers across Wyoming closed their doors.
From Torrington to Evanston, venerable, reliable, responsible news sources simply turned off the lights, closed the doors, paid (or didn’t pay) their reporters and support staff their final checks, and shut down, perhaps forever in the fickle environment that newspapers find themselves in.
I started reading the local paper at 12. It was the Sacramento Bee, the “big paper” for Northern California. A paper careful to separate itself from the monsters to the south in the San Francisco Chronicle and the true giant, the Los Angeles Times, with the largest circulation in the United States and the sixth largest in the world.
We moved to Wyoming when I was 14. It was the Riverton Ranger, in that old, small format, with occasional green or pink special editions.
As a college kid, we laughed at the “Rumor Bang” as we referred to the Laramie Boomerang, and argued with the bias in the Branding Iron, the student newspaper for the University of Wyoming.
In 1979, I had my first newspaper article published in the University of Wyoming Alum News, the publication of the University of Wyoming Alumni Association.
I got a gig writing wrestling for the Lusk Herald from the fall of 1980 until the Spring of 1983, and a first, brief tenure at the Riverton Ranger covering high school basketball at Shoshoni, Wind River, Wyoming Indian, Dubois, Jeffrey City and the fledgling St. Stephen’s Eagles under head coach Dick Cotton, all during the 1984-85 season.
It was a 10-year hiatus from the Ranger until I returned to the same beat in 1995.
Those papers that closed included the Lusk Herald, a venerable publication that dates its first edition back to May 20, 1886, when the “Wyoming Line” of the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad arrived in the newly named town of Lusk.
I read the Herald every time we visited Sue’s mom and dad in Lusk. They saved it for us. In its original form, before it was purchased by the conglomerate that just closed, it was a fascinating glimpse of life in small-town America. Back issues, available online through the Wyoming Newspaper Project, are full of accidents, pratfalls, drunken brawls, crimes, births, deaths, and stories of life long ago on the edge of the Great Plains. It was a great small-town paper in its day.
The Torrington Telegram, Kemmerer Gazette, Unita County Herald, and Pinedale Roundup had frequent photographs in the Peck era Riverton Ranger and Lander Journal. County 10 ran their photographs as well.
In Wyoming, with our vast distances, no reporter can follow multiple teams; it’s just too much geography for one person. The secret to getting photographs when Lander plays at Torrington, or when Riverton is in Evanston, is to share photos with another photographer. I shot many games for the hometown newspaper of the visiting teams, and they did the same for us when the Wolverines, Tigers, Rams, Chiefs, Wranglers, Eagles, or Cougars were hundreds of miles away on a wintery Friday night or Saturday afternoon.
If someone doesn’t step up to purchase and revive these papers, those days are gone as well.
But there is much more to a local newspaper than just images shared on the sports page or on a website. Newspapers were once the heart of the community, as integral a part of a small town as the local high school, the churches, or the businesses downtown.
In Fremont County’s 141-year history since our separation from Sweetwater County during Wyoming Territorial days in 1884, there have been 25 different newspapers.
Shoshoni, Riverton, and Lander each had over a half-dozen publications. Hudson, Pavillion, Jeffrey City, South Pass/Atlantic City, Dubois, Ft. Washakie, and the Wind River Reservation all once had newspapers.
Now there are just two remaining, the Dubois Frontier and the Riverton Ranger. The Lander Journal and Wind River News continue as separate publications, most often filled with stories already printed in the twice-a-week Ranger.
The newspaper business is tough. Newspapers once battled radio and then television to a standstill, maintaining their readership through in-depth reporting, quality photography, and dedicated, professional reporting.
The Internet chipped away at newspapers, the cell phone eroded their foundation, and now specific, biased online reporting that meshes with the preconceived notions of their audience is killing the objective nature of true reporting.
It’s been a sad process to witness daily publications lower to five days a week, then four, then two, and now most Wyoming newspapers print just once a week.
There are online versions, some free, and some behind a pay wall, but it just isn’t the same as the old days when you could grab a Casper Star Tribune off the newsstand or snag a Billings Gazette at the gas station in Lovell or Greybull as the team bus filled up for the trip back home.
Online news is instantaneous. It’s the future. Print-only publications are going the way of the buggy whip manufacturer in the era of mass-produced Model T’s. They just can’t compete.
We cover Fremont County wall to wall at County10. Is there anyone in place to provide that service to Lusk, Guernsey, Wheatland, Torrington, Pinedale, Kemmerer, or Evanston?
I hope there is.
A community deserves a reliable, professional news source, a source that actively looks for news and events in their community, promotes the community and serves as a stable point in uncertain times.
When Bob and Roy Peck created the Ranger after serving in World War II, they were the movers and shakers of a growing community in Riverton. The little town on the banks of the Wind River never had supporters as active, enthusiastic, and tireless as the Peck brothers, and will likely never have their ilk again.
The same was true for the publishers of the Lusk Herald, the Uinta County Herald, Pinedale Roundup, and all the other papers now resigned to the dustbin of history.
It’s sad when a community loses its grocery store, it’s worse when the local high school is consolidated with a close rival; it’s a tragedy when the local newspaper office closes.
Sadly, the trend isn’t likely to change.
Newspapers that cut circulation to only two days a week can circumvent FCC regulations preventing monopolies between local radio and local newspapers and sell advertising on both platforms. Inevitably, the radio ends up supporting the newspaper, keeping the press running through over-the-air advertising. But how long can that last as more readers reach for their phones than read the newspaper or listen to local radio?
As America becomes more Balkanized with armed political camps, hurling insults, and promoting physical violence against each other, an unbiased, local news source is the only way to prevent a catastrophe.
For now, eight Wyoming towns are suffering incalculable damage without their local paper.