What a local newspaper theft in Ouray County tells us about the power of the press

More than 200 copies of the Ouray County Plaindealer were recently stolen out of distribution boxes around town. The newspaper had just published a front-page story about an alleged sexual assault at the home of Ouray’s police chief. 

Journalist Corey Hutchins 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, “small and mighty” are the words he used to describe the Plaindealer, which was purchased by residents Mike Wiggins and Erin McIntyre in 2019.

“This 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, taking public service journalism seriously,” he told In The NoCo.

And that’s in a county of roughly 5,000 people, amid a crisis of shrinking local news.

It means the small paper is still managing to be a watchdog and hold local government accountable. A lot of Hutchins’ research tells us this isn’t the norm, though. He joined host Erin O’Toole to discuss the incident in Ouray County -- and what it tell us about the state of local journalism.

Read a letter from the Plaindealer’s publishers on why the paper reported about this incident here. 

Corey Hutchins’ weekly newsletter covers all things Colorado media. Here’s how to subscribe.