People in eight Wyoming communities have been cheering this week as they learned their local newspapers were saved.
This is not just good news for them locally and also for all of Wyoming.
The term “desert” gets used out here in the frontier when we lack things that people are used to seeing in bigger cities. When medical care is limited, the situation is often cited that we live in a medical desert.
Well, this past week, we heard about eight towns (Torrington, Wheatland, Guernsey, Pinedale, Bridger Valley, Lusk, Evanston, and Kemmerer) becoming “news deserts.”
Even in a depressed condition, local newspapers provide key information. About government meetings, births and deaths, little league team victories, lots of stuff about the local school systems . . . the list is almost endless.
There is no definite formula – each town and each newspaper is a little different from each other. But for centuries, people in this country have relied on their local papers for critical news.
Hats Off To The Hicks
Our hats go off to Robb and Jen Hicks of Buffalo who teamed with Rob Mortimore of Torrington to somehow revive the eight newspapers that were closed almost on a whim by an Illinois corporation.
Robb is a third generation Wyoming newspaperman. His parents Jim and Mary Hicks are outstanding journalists. Both served as presidents of the Wyoming Press Association, as have Robb and Jen. Jim’s dad Frank Hicks was a well-known journalist in Gillette and Buffalo.
“We are honored to assume stewardship of these legacy community newspapers,” Robb Hicks said. “Our foremost priority has been to ensure that these counties are not left without a credible, enduring source of local journalism.
“We also owe an immense debt of gratitude to JJ Thompkins,” added Mortimore. “It would have been far simpler for him to yield to the demands of creditors. Instead, he chose to work with us to safeguard the future of these Wyoming communities, to preserve their newspapers, and to ensure that every employee was paid and retained.”
I know newspapers. And I know small towns.
My wife Nancy and I worked at, operated, and owned newspapers from 1964 to 2008, some 44 years. Even after selling our papers, I wrote columns for Wyoming newspapers until 2023. Now this column is exclusive to the digital Cowboy State Daily. But I digress.
Sure, the younger generation relies more on digital. But the ability to hold a newspaper in your hand is still necessary to many people. And the ability to cut out an important clipping to save in the family bible or stick on the refrigerator is important, too.
Also, the printed media works best for legal notices. Sure, they are not read by everybody but they are there. You can find out what is going on with your government bodies by checking them.
Rob and Jen published the following which is just so well done, especially in the current instance:
The Place We Call Home
By Robb and Jen Hicks
Buffalo Bulletin
When a newspaper disappears, it doesn’t happen with the fanfare of a going-out-of-business sale. There are no “final edition” banners, no ceremonious farewells. More often, it happens quietly – one week the paper arrives, the next week it doesn’t.
That’s what happened recently to eight Wyoming newspapers owned by News Media Corporation. Without notice, the offices locked their doors. Websites stopped updating mid-sentence. Subscribers, reporters and advertisers found out at the same time: it was over. The cause was not a shortage of stories to tell, but a debt so deep that the company could no longer keep its promises.
These were not just businesses on a ledger; they were lifelines for their communities. A local paper is where the town sees itself reflected – school board votes, high school game scores, new business openings, obituaries, court records, the occasional triumph, the occasional scandal. Without it, something essential is missing, and that absence is not easily filled.
The Buffalo Bulletin is not owned by a distant corporation. We live here. We raise our children here. We work in the newsroom and out on the street. We know the stories because we live here. When the parade turns up Fort Street to avoid Main Street construction, we are there. When a blizzard closes the mountain pass, we’re already on the phone.
Our finances are sound. But newspapers are not self-sustaining monuments. They’re living institutions that depend on the communities they serve. The truth is, a paper’s survival is never guaranteed – not even ours – unless people decide it matters enough to read it, support it and share it.
A community newspaper is not a luxury. It’s a kind of infrastructure, as essential to the health of a place as a reliable water system or a passable road. Without it, rumors replace facts, memory fades, and civic life becomes less connected and less accountable.
Communities don’t lose their newspapers because their stories aren’t worth telling. They lose them because debtors far away have the power to decide their voices no longer matter. Here, in Buffalo, we still have the power to decide otherwise.
We hope you’ll keep deciding with us – every Thursday, in print and online – so we can keep telling the stories that make Johnson County the place we call home.
