Time to Feed the Horses
Every newspaper publisher has a few people who leave lasting footprints on a career. For me, one of those was Colorado Poet Laureate Thomas Hornsby Ferril.
Before my family moved to Denver in 1980, I founded and published the Craig Daily Press, transforming a small weekly newspaper into a daily serving northwest Colorado. My work with the Colorado Press Association often brought me to Denver, where I stayed at the historic Oxford Hotel.
The Oxford, beautifully restored by Denver preservationist Dana Crawford, was one of my favorite places. Built by the same visionaries who created the Brown Palace, it stood only a block from Union Station. Although Larimer Street had fallen on hard times during those years, the Oxford retained its elegance with polished wood, marble and one of the city’s finest breakfast restaurants.
That restaurant is where I first met Thomas Hornsby Ferril.
Ferril, Colorado’s Poet Laureate, was already a legend. He published the Rocky Mountain Herald, one of Colorado’s distinguished weekly newspapers, and his poetry celebrated the people and landscapes of the American West. I had been reading his newspaper in Craig, so when I recognized him over breakfast one morning, I introduced myself.
That introduction became a friendship.
Whenever my newspaper business brought me to Denver, we often shared breakfast and talked about newspapers, Colorado history and the future of community journalism. We also shared another friend, Gov. Dick Lamm, whose visits to Craig helped strengthen our community during years of remarkable growth.
One lesson from Tom has stayed with me for decades.
Every so often he would gently remind his readers that it was “time to feed the horses.”
He wasn’t writing about ranching.
He was reminding subscribers that newspapers depend on readers who pay their subscription renewals. It was his warmhearted way of saying that good journalism doesn’t happen by itself. The horses needed hay, and newspapers needed loyal readers.
I’ve smiled every time I’ve thought about that phrase over the years.
For 44 years, the Sweeney family has published The Villager every week. We’ve covered city councils, schools, businesses, nonprofits, civic leaders, neighborhood events and the people who make Arapahoe County such a remarkable place to live. We’ve celebrated accomplishments, reported difficult news and tried every week to produce a newspaper worthy of your trust.
Like Tom Ferril’s newspaper, ours is family owned. We carry no long-term debt. We pay our bills, support local journalism and continue doing what community newspapers have done for generations—tell the stories that would otherwise go untold.
Today, I’ll borrow a page from my old friend.
It may be time to feed the horses.
If your subscription renewal is sitting on the kitchen counter or tucked into a stack of mail waiting for “one of these days,” we’d be grateful if today became that day. Every renewal helps us pay for printing, postage and the dedicated people who continue bringing local news to your mailbox each week.
Thomas Hornsby Ferril understood something that remains true today. Community newspapers don’t belong to publishers alone. They belong to the communities that read them, support them and believe that local journalism still matters.
After all these years, I think Tom was right.
It’s time to feed the horses.