By Dana Davis
Reporter, Carbon County Comet
The ink had barely dried on the front page of the Pinedale Roundup’s July 31 edition when its newsroom received a gut punch—there would be no next issue.
On August 6, News Media Corporation closed eight Wyoming newspapers, including the 121-year-old Roundup, ending more than a century of local reporting in one swoop. Employees learned they had lost their jobs immediately, without a final edition or a proper goodbye.
“This means the doors to all of our community newspapers have closed permanently,” Managing Editor Cali O’Hare wrote in a farewell post. “Our hearts are broken for our colleagues and our communities. We all deserved better than this.”
The shutdown stunned rural readers across the state. In a letter to the Comet, Jennifer G. Johnson described her reaction as “devastated” and called the loss a “travesty.”
For the towns affected: Torrington, Wheatland, Guernsey, Lusk, Evanston, Pinedale, Kemmerer and Lingle, the void left by their local papers is more than a gap at the newsstand. It’s a hole in community life. Without dedicated local coverage, important issues go unreported, public notices may be less visible, and the shared record of births, deaths, games, parades and decisions that shape a place begins to disappear.
The reasons given by News Media Corporation are not unique: revenue losses, rising costs, and a failed attempt to sell the company. Across the nation, small-town newspapers are in the same fight, trying to keep the lights on while readers scroll online headlines elsewhere.
Here’s the truth no one likes to say out loud: a local newspaper can only survive if the community pays for it. Subscriptions and advertising aren’t “nice extras,” they are the oxygen that allows reporters to cover town council meetings, photographers to show up at football games and editors to print the obituaries that honor loved ones. Printing presses and websites cost money—every week.
Fortunately, there may be a silver lining on the horizon for the 8 recently closed newspapers. On August 12, Robb and Jen Hicks, owners of the Buffalo Bulletin, along with former publisher Rob Mortimore, announced they had reached an agreement in principle to purchase News Media Corporation’s Wyoming publications. They plan to rehire all employees and resume printing as soon as possible.
That rescue will mean little in the long run, though, if readers don’t do their part. The fate of every small-town paper, whether in Pinedale, Hanna or any other rural community, depends on the people it serves.
The message is simple: if you value your local newspaper, show it with a subscription, an ad for your business, or even an encouraging word for the staff. Without that support, the headlines about closures will keep coming, and one day, they might be about your own hometown paper.
