Looking forward to Thursday to pull the current edition of the newspaper out of the postal box in town or the mailbox outside one’s home will continue for a while longer. “According to the paper” our weekly print edition of our local paper will remain. Those three words are overheard as a regular conversation starter in the White River Valley. This one constant comment dates back more than 135 years.
A previous editor’s comments that many of us read in the archives of The Meeker Herald, as well as the Days Gone By column keep us all aware of the importance of covering community news.
Look for folks still standing outside the town’s post office on Thursday mornings looking over a fresh edition of the weekly Herald Times and you’ll find more than a couple now go to the Meeker Public Library in the afternoon and look for the latest copy.
The paper’s local subscribers are doing their best to offer their support. While cutting back on the delivery of the papers to local stores or news boxes, the ongoing stability provided by print access to the entire community cannot be stressed enough. The new “Lyttle Project” is offering just that. It is already working hard to ensure our own community will be able to continue printing.
The Rio Blanco Herald Times may have reached this point because of the loss of quite a few subscriptions and a great reduction in advertising, yet the paper is still read by everyone who wants to find out what has actually happened during the week. The majority of important public meetings, including those of the various special districts, sports and cultural events, remain in public view.
I have never lived in any small town that didn’t have a regular newspaper. While Meeker had a radio station in my early days here, like so many others in our community, I kept up with the local news through by having a paid subscription over the years. When the Meeker Herald was sold to a non-family member when the Cook elders sold it and their son Michael bought it, I still subscribed. My first few years of working for the family, Jim Sr. gave me two free subscriptions to the Thursday paper — one for my Mom who lived in Ohio and my own copy here in Meeker. You can say my loyalty still counts.
These days with most everyone going online to read the paper if they subscribe at all, the newest owners have had to come up with an unusual solution. I was not aware that a local historical society could provide a way to help out a newspaper. Whew…that was close.
By Dolly Viscardi
Special to the Herald Times
