After growing up in the business, then spending many more decades of reporting, publishing and owning newspapers, Mike Lindsey thought he couldn’t be surprised anymore by what makes news.
Then he heard about the bombshell announcement that closed nearly two dozen News Media Corp. community newspapers Wednesday, including eight in Wyoming and another just across the border in Nebraska.
“I just couldn’t believe it. It was complete shock,” Lindsey told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday, a day after the NMC properties were suddenly closed without notice to management and employees.
What really hits home is Lindsey once owned some of the legacy hometown newspapers that have now been shuttered after a century or more in operation.
“My wife didn’t sleep well last night thinking about it,” he said. “It’s like losing a relative.
“I was raised in Sundance, my dad owned that newspaper from 1936 on, so I was raised in it.”
News of the abrupt closure of the Pinedale Roundup, Platte County Record-Times, Guernsey Gazette, Torrington Telegram, Lusk Herald, Uinta County Herald, Bridger Valley Pioneer and Kemmerer Gazette also worries Dale Bohren.
As publisher emeritus of the Casper Star-Tribune, Bohren also published the Casper Journal and said Wyoming’s journalism industry is sad not only because the papers closed, but over the way it happened.
That is, with no notice.
News Media Corp. employees were emailed a separation letter from the company Wednesday morning informing them their jobs were terminated as of that day. It also said their health care coverage ended Wednesday.
“To have it be so abrupt is unconscionable,” Bohren said. “The way they’re treating those people is unconscionable. How you treat people and the integrity you have as a business — whatever the business is, integrity matters.
“I feel sorry for every one of those people and their kids. It’s just sad.”
Deal Fell Through
Aside from the letter to employees, News Media Corp. and its CEO, J.J. Thompkins, haven’t elaborated on why the company had to take such a drastic turn.
Repeated phone calls to News Media Corp. headquarters in Illinois were not returned, nor were emails to Thompkins.
The separation letter cites “financial challenges, a significant economic downturn … revenue losses and increasing expenses.”
It also mentions the failure of “an attempt to sell the company as a going concern.”
That would be a potential sale that was hashed out with Alabama-based Carpenter Media Group, according to a July 2024 press release announcing a deal between the companies.
As reported by Editor & Publisher at the time, Carpenter agreed to a plan that would have it manage News Media with an option to buy the company. That option was due at the end of July.
Carpenter didn’t exercise that option, according to the separation letter.
News Media employees knew of the potential for the company to be sold but had no clue it was close to being shut down, said Amanda Manchester, a reporter for the Uinta County Herald in Evanston, Wyoming.
“We knew there was a pending acquisition,” she told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday. “We just found out about two weeks ago that that fell through.”
What they didn’t know was that it meant such a swift and drastic action as what happened Wednesday.
“I was still working on stories late Tuesday night,” she said. “Then woke up to an email that there was a mandatory meeting. I was working until that last minute.”
‘To Be Frank, It Sucks’
Along with Lindsey and Bohren, Keith Cerny said he was heartbroken to learn about the shutdown of the Wyoming newspapers and the company.
He was with News Media Corp. for about 38 years, including stints at the company’s newspapers in Lusk and Evanston. He then oversaw News Media’s newspaper group in southern Colorado for decades until they were sold in 2023.
The news “made me sick to my stomach, to put it bluntly,” he said. “You don’t work for a company for almost 40 years and not be shellshocked.
“I knew they had been struggling bad for several years. They sold my Colorado operation because they needed the money.”
He wasn’t happy about that sale when it happened, but said he’s glad the Colorado papers aren’t part of what went down Wednesday.
“I am now, but I was not happy about the sale two years ago,” he said. “I did know in advance they had that pending sale for what was left of News Media, but apparently the buyer backed out.”
He also expressed sympathy for Wyoming group publisher Rob Mortimer, who said he was as shocked as everyone else with the announcement — then had to tell everyone.
“It would not be anything fun at all to have to announce that to your staff,” Cerny said. “I can’t imagine what that had to be like for him.”
Mortimer was emotional Wednesday telling Cowboy State Daily how devastated the move is not only for the employees, but those communities.
"I can't say anything but good things about our communities and our people," he said. "But to be frank, it sucks."
Cut Staff, Raised Prices
What sucks is how News Media drove itself into the ground, Lindsey said.
While he acknowledges an increasingly difficult business landscape for community print journalism, he said J.J. Tompkins, who took over after the death of his father John Tompkins about two years ago, allegedly cut the newspapers to the bone.
Pinedale Roundup Editor Cali O’Hare told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that she had been a one-person newsroom since J.J. Tompkins and the company cut the rest of her editorial staff in February 2024.
Lindsey said he was friends with the older Tompkins and that he “told me several times he should fire (the son), but he was family,” Lindsey wrote in a letter to the editor about the closures.
“The son immediately started to cut expenses, mostly in the newsroom, with local memberships and supplies cut first,” he wrote. “Then advertising and subscription rates were raised substantially.”
Along with owning and publishing newspapers, Lindsey also brokered sales of more than 100 community publications, including for News Media Corp.
Former NMC Wyoming staffers expressed frustration Wednesday with getting no responses from the company or Tompkins.
The real concern is that closing hometown publications like these doesn’t just affect the people who work there, Bohren said.
“The value of a community newspaper is it’s the thread that binds us all together,” he said. “The community news is the chicken dinner news, it’s not the impact of new tariffs on the economy, it’s about the new park that’s opening.”
Even if it was inevitable the papers had to close their doors, keeping the employees in the dark about that, then springing it on them last second, is bad all-around, he said.
“With no notice or talking to employees? That’s just bad business,” Bohren said. “That’s stupid business.
“I worked in the industry when it was a little stronger, but we always depended on our employees to make good decisions for us to succeed. The ripples (from this move) are going to be many.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
