HT STAFF
MEEKER | With this issue of the HT we begin our 141st year of continuous community journalism as the second oldest newspaper in Northwest Colorado (the Steamboat Pilot beat us by two weeks because of travel troubles encountered getting the old printing press from Leadville to Meeker by our erstwhile founder, James Lyttle, whose hat has a place of honor in the editor’s office.
In the years to follow, the Lyttle family stewarded Meeker’s “first rough draft of history” from 1885 until the mid 1960s. Then the Cook family took over the assignment through the 1990s, when the paper was briefly in the hands of Sureva Towler, then the Troesters, followed by the Murdocks. The Bettis family owned the paper from 2000 to 2016, and the Turner/Walker team from 2016 to present-day. This fall marks editor Niki Turner’s 25th year at the paper in various capacities.
In a time when community newspapers are vanishing all across the nation, unable to compete with social media and internet advertising, it’s the continued support, encouragement, advertising and subscriptions, content contributions and participation, and reader loyalty that keep the Herald going. We need you, and we thank you for making sure the town that “has almost always had a newspaper” according to Rich Lyttle, continues to have a paper every week.
Please consider advertising, if you own a business or want to help support one. Subscribe if you haven’t done so already. And financial contributions toward the continued “thrivability” of the newspaper can go to The Lyttle Project, c/o Rio Blanco County Historical Society, PO Box 413, Meeker CO 81641.