More than 200 copies of the Ouray County Plaindealer were recently stolen out of distribution boxes around town. The newspaper about an alleged sexual assault at the home of Ouray鈥檚 police chief.
Journalist has some thoughts on this. The co-director of the Colorado College Journalism Institute writes a weekly newsletter that goes behind Colorado headlines. In that newsletter, 鈥渟mall and mighty鈥� are the words he used to describe the Plaindealer, which was purchased by residents Mike Wiggins and Erin McIntyre in 2019.
鈥淭his is not a vehicle for advertising with a little bit of, fun, fluffy news sprinkled in, like you might find in the diner in some small town somewhere. This is a newspaper, I believe that has, since they've owned it for the past few years, taken public service journalism seriously,鈥� he told In The NoCo.
And that is in a county of roughly 5,000 people, amid a crisis of shrinking local news.
In other words, the small paper is still managing to be a watchdog and hold local government accountable. A lot of Hutchins鈥� research tells us this isn鈥檛 the norm, though.
He joined In The NoCo鈥檚 Erin O鈥橳oole to discuss the incident in Ouray County and the state of local journalism.
Read a letter from the 笔濒补颈苍诲别补濒别谤鈥檚 publishers on why the paper reported about this incident
Corey Hutchins鈥� weekly newsletter covers all things Colorado media. .
