An award-winning journalist with nearly a half-century of experience has joined the staff of Cowboy State Daily as managing editor for weekend and features content.
Jeff Welsch has been an editor, reporter/writer and columnist for newspapers in Montana, Oregon, Idaho and Arizona since 1979, most recently as editor-in-chief of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and four other publications in southwest Montana.
Welsch has lived and worked for the past 22 years in Montana, notably starting and leading 406 MT Sports, which became the No. 1 niche sports site nationally in subscriptions for Lee Newspapers. While with Lee, he also had a stint as Montana editor overseeing papers in Billings, Missoula, Butte, Helena and Hamilton.
“I have marveled at Cowboy State Daily’s work from my front porch in Montana for several years, and I’m thrilled to be part of a team that’s showing every day how to build and retain readership in an ever-evolving and challenging news landscape,” Welsch said. “Cowboy State Daily is proof that if you build it with engaging, valuable and credible content, readers will come.”
Cowboy State Daily executive editor Jimmy Orr said it was a coup for the publication to bring on someone with Welsch's background and expertise.
"I admired what Jeff was doing in Bozeman and we developed a relationship based on shared admiration of each other's work," Orr said. "We see a real opportunity in features and long form storytelling and there's no one better to lead the effort than Jeff."
"Jeff knows the Rocky Mountain West and has spent a lot of time in and reporting on Wyoming," Orr said. "We're thrilled to have him on our team."
Welsch, a St. Louis native and Arizona State alum, began his newspaper journey as a part-time sports reporter at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix in 1979, before the paper had computers in the newsroom. He has spent most of his career covering sports, primarily college basketball and football, at the The Idaho Statesman in Boise for seven years -- he was there when Boise State installed its famed blue turf – and for 13 years covering Oregon State athletics as sports editor for the Corvallis Gazette-Times/Albany Democrat-Herald.
In Boise, Welsch also was a regional correspondent covering the Intermountain West and parts of the Midwest for Gannett News Service/USA Today. Among his stories was a 1987 profile on University of Wyoming basketball legend Fennis Dembo, the self-proclaimed “‘Lectric Man!”
In 2004, Welsch became sports editor of the Daily Chronicle in Bozeman, and he’s been in the same home in the Gallatin Valley ever since.
Welsch’s sports sections in Corvallis and Bozeman received numerous top 10 citations in the prestigious annual Associated Press Sports Editors contest. He also was honored for sports-column writing by APSE and in 2006 took first place in enterprise reporting for his coverage of a Montana musher in Alaska’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Welsch had a brief hiatus from newspapers from 2008-14 when he worked as a communications and media director for a Yellowstone-based conservation group. In that role, he routinely engaged with residents in Cody, Powell, Jackson, Pinedale and other communities in northwest Wyoming.
In that time, Welsch, an avid road cyclist, facilitated the creation of a weeklong annual bicycle tour called Cycle Greater Yellowstone, which included two nights in Cody in its first year in 2013. The following summer, the CGY route featured Jackson, Pinedale, Lander, Dubois and ice cream in Farson.
In its first year, with roughly 700 participants from around the world, Cycle Greater Yellowstone was the fourth-largest multi-day bicycle tour in North America.
Welsch returned to newspapers in 2014 as sports editor of The Billings Gazette. He started 406 MT Sports in 2016.
In June, Welsch was honored by the Montana Newspaper Association with its annual Master Editor/Publisher Award, which recognizes “lifetime or career-defining contributions to local journalism and community news publishing.”
Welsch also has co-authored six books, including guidebooks on Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, the Backroads & Byways of Montana, and Oregon Wine Country. His most recent, Montana Greats, in which he picked the greatest athlete from nearly 270 Montana communities.
Welsch and his wife, Sherry, have three adult children and six grandchildren.
