Pinedale Roundup reclaims government business — with warning from Sublette County official

JACKSON — The new, Wyoming-based owners of the Pinedale Roundup will once again print Sublette County’s legal notices, an important source of government and community information for the public.

The Town of Pinedale also plans to again run legals with the weekly newspaper.

The Pinedale paper’s reclaiming of government business came with a sharp warning from Sublette County Commission Chair Lynn Bernard, who said he liked that the county doesn’t have a formal contract with the Roundup.

“That is appealing, because if you poop at my dinner plate, I’m going to take the steps to change to someone else,” Bernard told the Roundup’s new owners at a Sept. 16 meeting, indicating his willingness to take the county’s legal advertising elsewhere. “You haven’t been here long enough for me to be blindly faithful to you,” he added.

The five-member board voted unanimously to move the county’s legal advertising back to the Roundup from the Rocket Miner, the Sweetwater County paper that stepped in to carry the legals the week the Roundup didn’t print.

While legal notices generate revenue for newspapers, that cash flow is typically smaller than income from display advertising. 

The greater purpose of legals is to serve the community with information about government business that’s accurate and cannot be manipulated or altered after publication. That permanence is also the cornerstone of the Wyoming Press Association’s opposition to shifting notices exclusively online.

The Roundup has served as Pinedale’s paper of record for more than a century.

But that track record was interrupted in August when the Illinois-based News Media Corporation abruptly shuttered the Roundup along with eight other small Wyoming weeklies. Six days after the closures, Wyoming publishers Robb and Jen Hicks, along with former News Media Corporation executive Rob Mortimore, announced they had purchased the shuttered titles and would resume publishing immediately.

The Hicks family, who has owned the Buffalo Bulletin since 1996, brings multigenerational ties to Wyoming journalism; Mortimore, who lives in Torrington, previously oversaw News Media’s statewide operations. 

The list of closures spanned the state, hitting papers ranging from the Platte County Record-Times in Wheatland to the Uinta County Herald in Evanston, founded in 1870.

Though the Roundup quickly restarted printing — missing just one week on the news racks — that lapse jeopardized its legal advertising.

Under state law, local governments must publish ordinances, budgets, meeting minutes and other notices in a newspaper printed within their jurisdiction.

During the gap, Sublette County commissioners voted 3-1 to designate the Rocket Miner as their temporary outlet. The Town of Pinedale followed suit.

At last Tuesday’s meeting, Robb Hicks told commissioners the Roundup had rehired staff, opened a local bank account, called a local insurer and started printing about 1,000 copies a week. The paper is honoring existing subscriptions, but Hicks was clear about its capacity. One reporter, an office manager and an advertising representative is the only staff the Roundup’s revenue can support.

“If revenues grow, coverage will grow,” Hicks said.

“I wouldn’t have gotten involved if I thought I’d jeopardize everything,” he added. “These papers didn’t close because they weren’t profitable. They closed because a parent company somewhere else piled on debt and pulled from Wyoming to pay for it.”

When the Roundup closed in August, The Rocket Miner pitched the Sublette County commission a $6.50 column-inch rate for printing legals.

Commissioners allowed the Rocket Miner to propose and negotiate that rate during a public meeting but did not take formal bids from surrounding newspapers, including the Star Valley Independent in Afton or the Jackson Hole News&Guide, the Jackson Hole Daily’s sister publication.

Last Tuesday, commissioners asked if Hicks would consider lowering his $18.50 column-inch rate. Hicks declined, reminding the board that, unlike the Rocket Miner, the Roundup was investing directly in Sublette County — renting an office, buying insurance, employing local people and reporting local news. 

In contrast, the Miner was taking business in another county, where it didn’t have staff, infrastructure or coverage, allowing it to make legals “a lot cheaper,” he said.

The Roundup prints on Wednesdays at Teton Media Works, the parent company of the Daily and the News&Guide.

“This is a town that cares deeply about their newspaper,” Hicks said of Pinedale. “They want to have the best possible newspaper and understand the importance of having a newspaper that is not only a watchdog of the government, but is an official record of what happens in the community.”

This story was published on Sept. 22, 2025.