Pinedale Roundup chosen for national newspaper initiative
PINEDALE — The Pinedale Roundup has survived blizzards, boom cycles, bust cycles and the slow rearrangement of how people learn what is happening around them.
Now the Roundup is preparing for something less visible, but no less consequential: a reconsideration of how a local newspaper survives at all.
Over the coming weeks, the Roundup will participate in a national initiative examining new business models for community newspapers. The project brings together newsroom staff, management, readers and advertisers to help shape a sustainable future for local journalism—one rooted not in nostalgia, but in practicality.
Pinedale Roundup managing editor Cali O’Hare entered the legacy publication to be considered for this initiative at the Wyoming Press Association 127th Convention in January.
Pinedale is the fifth newspaper in the nation selected for this prestigious opportunity, which has already strengthened newspapers in North Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.
“The business model most newspapers still rely on was developed in 1833, when Andrew Jackson was president,” said Teri Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas and co-author of Reviving Rural News. “It assumed news should be dirt cheap and endlessly subsidized by advertising. That model no longer works. No other business could survive on a 200-year-old structure. Newspapers have to change.”
Finneman, a native of North Dakota, will guide the Roundup’s process after meeting its staff and owners at the annual Wyoming Press Association. She said the selection was deliberate.
“What stood out was a clear commitment to the community,” Finneman said. “There’s real interest here in listening to readers and advertisers and building something that fits the place it serves. That makes Pinedale an ideal community for this kind of work.”
The project will include a series of focus groups designed to reflect the breadth of Sublette County—different professions, backgrounds and perspectives—along with surveys and open feedback opportunities. The goal, Finneman said, is not to arrive with answers, but to ask better questions.
“Local newspapers are still absolutely critical,” she said. “They watch local government. They share the good and the bad. They celebrate young people and record the stories that otherwise disappear. When local newspapers go away, communities lose cohesion. Democracy weakens.”
Nationally, that loss has been accelerating.
Finneman points to research showing more than 200 U.S. counties are now classified as “news deserts,” with hundreds more at risk.
The closures are not theoretical. Sublette County saw the Roundup nearly die before new ownership stepped in to bring it back in August 2025.
For O’Hare, who has shepherded the Roundup through budget cuts, layoffs, the corporate closure, and the reopening since she was hired in July 2022, this initiative marks an opportunity to ensure the Roundup continues to chronicle the happenings of Sublette County for generations to come.
“This publication, founded in 1904, has been so special to the people who call Sublette County home. Good community journalism cannot exist without the good communities we serve, so it is only appropriate that our readers and residents get to weigh in on what the future of the Roundup looks like,” she said.
For Robb Hicks, who co-owns the Roundup with his wife, Jen, and partner Rob Mortimore, the initiative is less about reinvention than alignment.
“A newspaper only works if it reflects the reality of the place it serves,” Hicks said. “You can’t impose a model from the outside and expect it to stick. What we’re trying to do is listen carefully to what Sublette County wants and figure out how to support that in a way that’s financially honest.”
Mortimore, who has spent his career working with Wyoming newspapers, said the effort is grounded in realism rather than retreat.
“The Roundup has a long history here, and that matters,” he said. “But history alone doesn’t pay reporters or keep the lights on. This is about making sure the paper is still here 10 years from now—and that it’s doing the kind of reporting people actually rely on.”
This story was published on Feb. 19, 2026.