You can go home again…
Come with Gerri and I to Northwest Colorado this past weekend to walk down memory lane, visit friends, and speak to the local historical group about the history of Craig newspapers. The invitation came from Danny Davidson, the curator of the world-class Museum of Northwest Colorado in the old Craig Armory building, where I once played basketball in grade school.
We didn’t take a proposed passenger train through Rollinsville and the historic Moffat Tunnel; instead, we had to contend with Floyd Hill, which lived up to its bad reputation.
The $700 million construction project is still ongoing, and a pothole formed at the base of the hill. Several vehicles reportedly suffered tire damage after falling into the hole, which ruined tires and blocked traffic for two hours until it was patched and the damaged cars were towed away. We were fortunate not to be among the cars damaged.
The 220-mile drive to Craig was enjoyable, with many herds of Angus cattle grazing in freshly mowed hayfields. Once we left Frisco and headed toward Kremmling, the traffic was light as we crossed Rabbit Ears Pass into the bustling downtown area of Steamboat Springs.
We arrived at the Best Western Motel in Craig and had dinner with my first cousin, Patricia Sweeney Pierce, to catch up on Craig and Moffat County news from Patricia, whom I grew up with. She is a Craig native, student body president at MCHS, a former nurse, and the daughter of Patrick and Edna Sweeney, one of my ranching uncles.
The invitation was to speak to the local Frontier history group about the history of the Craig newspapers, where I started my newspaper career in 1961.
It all started with a small weekly newspaper, which expanded into the five-day Craig Daily Press over 20 years.
Virginia-based newspaper group Ogden Newspapers acquired the Craig Daily Press from the Swift newspaper chain and also owns The Vail Trail and Steamboat Pilot. The newspaper has fallen on hard times—only publishing once a week as Craig reels from the proposed shutdown of the four power plants, the first one set to close in 2026. (That’s another story).
Ogden sold the newspaper building I remodeled, got rid of the printing press, and now prints the weekly newspaper at the Gypsum plant west of Vail, which is delivered to Craig weekly along with their Steamboat Springs newspapers.
When Ogden sold the building, they donated the historic binderies from the early Craig Empire-Courier and our Craig Daily Press to the museum, which has now digitized the 20 years that Gerri and I published the paper. The massive collection of historic binderies, containing “news as it happened,” is in the basement of the museum, waiting for a prominent spot in the 10,000+ sq. ft. facility.
The program took place at the remodeled Yampa school, where my mother had been a third-grade teacher for over 30 years, and I attended the school. One of my best classmates, Larry Seip, sat in the front row during my speech; we hugged each other before and after my remarks. We played marbles in the school yard and, later in life, enjoyed playing golf together.
Also in attendance were six of our former newspaper colleagues and longtime friends who had helped us in our newspaper journey.
Everything I know about the business started in Craig with linotypes, type cases, handset headlines, and ink on newsprint, one sheet at a time. Not to mention meeting a deadline. My slogan in Craig was, “News while it’s news, not history.” I wrote a daily column for nearly 20 years.
Now the Villager uses computers and color offset printing on every page, which are addressed and mailed each week to mailboxes and paid subscribers for $78 a year, covering 52 weeks. Getting coffee at Starbucks each week will cost you over $336!
Newspapers are going out of business quickly for several reasons. First, and most importantly, rising costs and the shortage of printing plants. Newspapers are hesitant to raise subscriber prices for fear of losing readers. The latest trend for many local papers is to become nonprofit, adopting a model similar to public radio, which depends on donations and foundation grants.
Public radio doesn’t look very good now under the Trump regime, and newspapers are slow to catch up.
Finally, good newspapers need to connect with their community, but due to high turnover, many have lost that connection. We aim to serve our cities by promoting numerous nonprofit organizations, service clubs like Lions, Rotary, and Optimist clubs, and covering important city news and local elections.
We keep bound volumes of the newspapers each year and have complete collections of our published papers stored securely, ensuring history is preserved for future generations.
They say, “You can’t go home again.”
We received a warm welcome in my hometown of Craig, and we thoroughly enjoyed the event. Thanks to Danny for the invitation and to everyone who attended the program. Bless you all… it was a real treat to walk down memory lane together.