Wyoming abruptly loses eight local newspapers

CHEYENNE — Eight Wyoming newspapers closed abruptly Wednesday morning following the sudden closure of their parent company, News Media Corporation.

The company announced the closures via an internal letter, leaving former employees jobless, without health care or a clear compensation plan — effective immediately.

The company cited financial challenges, saying the decision “was not made lightly.”

The letter also noted that human resources support will remain available through Aug. 27. However, health care coverage was terminated as of Wednesday, and the company’s letter said it would make “all reasonable efforts” to pay employees’ remaining compensation.

The letter was posted to the Pinedale Roundup’s Facebook page by the paper’s managing editor, Cali O’Hare.

“Our hearts are broken for our colleagues and our communities,” O’Hare wrote. “We all deserved better than this, and we wish we could have said a proper goodbye.”

The Roundup has been serving Pinedale for 120 years. O’Hare has been its editor since July 2022.

In Wyoming, NMC operated through a subsidiary called Wyoming Newspapers Inc., which published papers in Torrington, Wheatland, Guernsey, Lusk, Pinedale, Kemmerer, Evanston and Lyman.

These local journalists no longer get to tell the stories of their communities, Wyoming Newspapers Inc. President Rob Mortimore said. At the moment, Mortimore — who has also served as publisher of the Torrington Telegram — is doing his best to support the 30 employees who just lost their jobs.

“Across the state, we employed some of the greatest and hardworking individuals I’ve ever met,” Mortimore wrote in a post to the Torrington Telegram’s Facebook. “I am forever grateful for their dedication to you, our readers and advertisers, and their commitment to bringing valuable news and information on a daily basis. Our hearts hurt.”

The loss of papers like the Telegram will leave several Wyoming communities without any local journalism, potentially leading to “news deserts,” Mortimore told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

The term refers to communities with limited or nonexistent access to credible and comprehensive local news.

“Nine communities no longer have a newspaper,” Mortimore wrote on Facebook. “With our vast spaces, there will undoubtedly be a void, leaving stories of great people, great accomplishments and great memories going untold. No more watchdog for local governments.”

The potential lack of watchdog journalism has serious impacts. Several studies have shown that taxpayer costs increase in news deserts, Mortimore said. One such study, titled “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance,” published in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2020, found that local newspapers hold governments accountable, keeping municipal borrowing costs low and ultimately saving local taxpayers money.

The study also found that government wage rates, government employees per capita, taxes per capita, and county deficits per capita also increase when communities lose newspapers.

O’Hare noted that with the Roundup closing its doors, Sublette County will no longer have a local paper. The same can be said for Uinta County.

“I want folks to know that they can’t just sit idly by while corporations swoop in and close down their access to information,” O’Hare said. “... I hope that the citizens and the subscribers don’t take this lying down. I’d love to see them fight for their access to information.”

O’Hare doesn’t intend to go down without a fight, saying she’s looking at all options to keep reporting alive in Sublette County.

“We’re going to see what we can do to fill the gap here in Sublette County to ensure that our community still has access to factual, reliable news, because we just can’t stomach the idea of just being OK with the news desert here,” O’Hare said.

Though there are people who take it upon themselves to write about current events and post to various online platforms, O’Hare noted that doesn’t make up for the loss of trained journalists who adhere to specific standards of reporting.

“I’m worried about the spread of misinformation, but I’m also worried that our citizens won’t know,” O’Hare said. “(I’m worried) they won’t find out about the important things that they need to weigh in on.”

Even if digital sources can bridge the gap, some people in Sublette County will still be left in the dark due to limited internet access.

“We’ve got folks here in Sublette County who don’t own a TV, they don’t own computers,” O’Hare said. “I know that that’s hard for people to imagine in other places, but where agriculture is so prominent here in rural Wyoming, a lot of people get their news from the paper, and that’s their only source of information.”

Mortimore noted that some of the Telegram’s subscribers will face the same challenge, as will many other Wyomingites in the more rural communities impacted by the closures.

Mortimore and O’Hare noted that they both spent most of Wednesday morning speaking with community members, who expressed their frustrations and support.

Many of the journalists in the impacted communities have built personal connections with sources, Mortimore said. Local journalists are also your neighbors, and their job is to give a voice to their community.

“Those relationships, they’ll never go away,” Mortimore said. “And it’s extremely hard to take in that we can’t be that voice any longer, but I want them to know that we gave it our all, we did everything we could, and we were extremely grateful for the time we did have.”

The Wyoming Press Association Board of Directors sent out a statement Wednesday, reaffirming the negative impact of these closures. The statement noted that NMC’s decision will impact tens of thousands of Wyomingites and dozens of loyal employees.

“The sudden actions taken by News Media Corporation are not indicative of the state of newspapers in Wyoming,” WPA’s statement read. “There are still dozens of newspapers who are fierce advocates for their communities, whether through reporting on local high school sports or holding their local governments accountable. Newspapers represent the soul of Wyoming, both speaking for and to the communities they serve.”

The WPA ended its statement by encouraging any of its members who have job openings to list them with WPA as soon as possible in an attempt to keep the journalists who lost their jobs Wednesday in the state.

This story was published on August 7, 2025.