LIMON — In an era when cynics are predicting end times for newspapers, I’m pleased to report this from the local news front:
A young couple, sane and with eyes wide open, bought two small- town weeklies from which they’re actually profiting.
When I heard Jessica and Charlie Hoffman, 28 and 30, had taken over Hugo’s Eastern Colorado Plainsman and the Limon Leader, I headed east to check on their sanity. Maybe word hadn’t reached the Eastern Plains that these aren’t exactly boom times for our industry.
“Yeah, but the blogosphere, new media, they mean nothing here,” says Charlie, estimating that less than half his readers access the Internet. “As long as there’s a grandma with a grandkid playing ball, we’ll survive.”
Newspapering runs in Hoffman’s family. His great-grandparents founded the Genoa Sentinel in 1912. They went on to publish the Arriba Record and Bovina Times, chronicling the Dust Bowl in the Depression.
Charlie grew up playing with typeset boxes left long after his family sold out in 1939. He ran the Leader’s photo department in high school.
Like most kids growing up in these parts — even Generation Xers blamed largely for newspaper declines nationally — Jessica always read religiously.
“It’s a small town. There’s nothing else to do but pick up the Leader,” she says.
“Wouldn’t miss it. Where else would we get the local gossip?” adds Joslynn Ortiz, 21, a waitress at Ruby’s diner in Limon.
Colorado’s “Hub City of Hospitality” is a highway junction with two truck stops, one health clinic and one school.
It made national headlines only once — when a tornado flattened half the town in 1990. Big news for locals came when the Badgers ran undefeated in football from 2005 to 2007.
News here mainly means drought, declining crop prices, snowstorms, car accidents and stabbings at the local prison.
It also entails scrapbook journalism chronicling town meetings, school-lunch menus and family milestones. Both papers feature folksy “Meet Your Neighbor” columns and dispatches from the backwaters.
Cora Freeman, the 95-year- old Genoa correspondent, reported recently that “Colton and Hannah visited their grandmother at Carla’s on Saturday,” as it was fully evident who and where she meant.
The papers steer clear of politics. Neither mentioned the presidential race until reporting Lincoln County’s vote tallies the week after the election.
They also avoid covering the economic crisis. An instinct not to “kick folks when they’re down” keeps the demise of local businesses off their pages.
“Nobody in these parts would admit how it’s affecting them, anyway,” Jessica says.
Like most small-town journalists, editor and lone reporter Kay. Christie sleeps next to her police scanner — which she would hear anyway because her husband is a firefighter. As for investigative journalism, that’s not her job.
“We don’t pry,” she says.
“No need to,” adds Charlie. “We live in a good community.”
A month into their ownership, the Hoffmans gleefully report that ads are up and circulation vastly exceeds the populations of the towns they cover.
Jessica, who used to work for a repair shop, and Charlie, who ran computers for a biosolids company, have found their bliss laying out pages, selling ads, stuffing inserts and delivering.
“We got another one done,” Charlie messages his wife each week, triumphant after his last drop at a Conoco in Arriba.
From this newsroom to the Hoffmans’, we send our solidarity. Long live print journalism. And long may it prosper.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
