Editor and Publisher Reports

Friday, October 13th, 2023, was a scary day for the citizens of Meeker, the largest town in Colorado's Rio Blanco County, nestled on the Rockies' western slope, with a population of slightly over 6,500. It was on this day that Niki Turner and Caitlin Walker, the mother and daughter owners of the area's primary local news source, the Rio Blanco Herald Times, sent out an email with the subject line: "Crisis alert: Save your community paper." Within this ominous message, Niki and Caitlin revealed to their community the harsh realities of local news publishing and their own newspaper's critical financial status. They admitted that the operation only had enough money left to publish two more issues of the weekly newspaper and stated that they would shut down on October 26th. Unlike most businesses (and newspapers) who would fear revealing such a poor bottom line to their customers, these publishers decided that an honest, open, truthful message was the right thing to do as a warning that Rio Blanco would soon be