Longtime Wyoming newspaper executives to buy, reopen eight shuttered newspapers

This story is published by agreement with WyoFile. It may not be republished without the express permission of WyoFile.

Wyoming newspaper executives Robb and Jen Hicks and Rob Mortimore announced Tuesday they’ve reached an agreement to purchase eight local newspapers and will keep them running after an out-of-state corporate owner shuttered them without warning last week.

“What better news could you get,” said Marie Hamilton, reporter and managing editor for two of the papers: the Platte County Record-Times and Guernsey Gazette. “There was a lot of tears, but good tears,” she said of the staff reaction to the announcement. 

The announcement comes six days after the Illinois-based News Media Corporation suddenly closed its publications in Niobrara, Goshen, Platte, Sublette, Lincoln and Uinta counties. The sale agreement calls for rehiring all newspaper staff and immediately resuming publication of all titles, according to Robb Hicks. 

“We are honored to assume stewardship of these legacy community newspapers,” he said in an announcement posted to the newspapers’ Facebook pages. “Our foremost priority has been to ensure that these counties are not left without a credible, enduring source of local journalism.”

Mortimore expressed “an immense debt of gratitude to JJ Tompkins,” the former owner, in the announcement. 

“It would have been far simpler for him to yield to the demands of creditors,” Mortimore said. “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.”   

An overwhelmed and overjoyed Hamilton described Mortimore as pulling a rabbit out of his hat and emphasized the value of the new in-state ownership. 

“He’s a Goshen boy,” she said, of Mortimore, who grew up in Torrington and has long worked at and run newspapers in the state. “Wyoming problems need Wyoming solutions from Wyoming people.” 

Mortimore will continue to serve as group publisher. He and his wife, Shaylee, live in Torrington. The Hicks have owned and operated the Buffalo Bulletin, where Robb is publisher and Jen Sieve-Hicks serves as executive editor, since 1996. The Hicks family has multigenerational ties to Wyoming newspapers, dating back seven decades, the announcement said.

The agreement follows News Media Corporation’s announcement  Wednesday that it was closing its doors immediately and “permanently” — abruptly shuttering newspapers in Wheatland, Torrington, Evanston, Pinedale, Kemmerer, Lusk, Lyman and Guernsey. The eight Wyoming newspapers, with 30 employees, were among about two dozen newspapers across five states that suddenly went dark. 

Mortimore was the publisher of Wyoming Newspapers Inc., a subsidiary of News Media Corporation. Although he oversaw News Media Corporation’s publications in Wyoming and Nebraska, he said last Wednesday’s shutdown came as a “shock” to him, alongside the employees he managed.

“This closure had nothing to do with the Wyoming newspapers,” Hamilton said. “All of our papers were profitable.”

Not willing to watch their communities become news deserts overnight, Mortimore and many laid-off employees started looking for ways to keep the newspapers going. Hamilton and other staff kept working, without pay, to keep the papers going. Under the purchase agreement, Hamilton expects to receive a paycheck by the end of this week. 

“We will get a paycheck on Friday, which I said, ‘I don’t care. You just told me my newspaper’s back,’” Hamilton told WyoFile.

Mortimore and the Hicks were not alone in their quest to get the papers back up and running. 

Darcie Hoffland, executive director of the state’s newspaper trade group, the Wyoming Press Association, told WyoFile late last week that the association had been scrambling to help find a solution.

“There’s a lot of people who care about these communities [and] are working really, really hard to get the job, to get these papers open as quickly as possible,” she said.

State law says newspapers must publish an edition at least once a week to be deemed an official “newspaper of record” and eligible to print legally mandated public notices — a coveted source of revenue that’s helped sustain Wyoming newspapers. News Media Corporation owned a significant chunk of Wyoming’s legal newspapers — eight of 39.

The newspaper closures had towns and counties across the state looking at ways to post and publish legal notices, from posting them in their clerk’s offices to moving publication to other newspapers. 

The Pinedale Roundup broke its publishing streak last week after its Illinois-based parent company instructed staff to cancel the Roundup’s Aug. 7 print edition, which had already been reported, edited and designed. Roundup Managing Editor Cali O’Hare then broke the news of the closures on the paper’s Facebook page and website. Today, the eight newspapers had more news to break online, posting to their Facebook pages the newly inked purchase agreement.

In last Wednesday’s memo to employees, News Media Corporation CEO Tompkins said the company would “make all reasonable efforts” to issue final paychecks, while health insurance coverage was terminated immediately. 

In the memo to employees, Tompkins cited “financial challenges, a significant economic downturn impacting our industry, revenue losses and increasing expenses, and the recent failure of an attempt to sell the company…” 

Mortimore had informed staff in late July that a potential plan to sell the company to the Alabama-based Carpenter Media Group was no longer in play.

Tompkins said the company had explored “every possible avenue” to continue operating, but “reached a point where continuing business is no longer feasible.”