Sundance Times changes ownership
SUNDANCE — For many years, the name “Moberg” has been synonymous with Crook County’s newspapers.
After two decades at the head of Sundance Times Inc., Jeff and Yvonne are heading into retirement this week, looking forward to spending more time with the family.
The corporation now passes into the hands of Sarah and Wes Pridgeon, who aim to keep publishing the same quality newspapers that readers expect.
First Days
Jeff may have been a full-time fixture of the newspaper office for the past couple of decades, but it has been a second home for him since he was too short to see over the counter.
“It was a big part of my childhood with Dad being here,” he said. “Dad started working here in the 1960s. Then he went off to go and do other things and came back and bought it in 1998.”
Jeff remembers walking down to the back of the office, where the press was housed, and the smell of the ink as the latest issue was printed.
“Some of that still lingers,” he said. “It was fascinating, but I never thought I’d be here. It was not on my radar at all to ever be in the newspaper business.”
Fate had other ideas. In the 2000s, Jeff agreed to take on the role of editor and reporter.
By that time, a lot had changed – there was no press machine out back, and the front was filled with computers.
“The learning curve was huge,” he said. “I think the hardest thing was building up the self-confidence as a reporter to feel comfortable in your own shoes and reach that point where you believe someone when they say they like what you did.”
The writing was different to anything Jeff had done before, but he found himself cherishing the experience – especially the uplifting stories and the ones that shone a light on the community.
One of his early stories, and still among his favorites, was about a mother and daughter who were stranded in town on the way to a funeral.
“They ended up at the Aro,” he said. “Somebody at the restaurant caught wind of the conversation and started taking up donations. They got their car towed in and fixed, put them in a hotel for the night – they took care of them tip to tail.”
Watching the community rally was fascinating, he said, as was talking to the mother and daughter about what the experience had meant to them.
“The ones where you can tell a story and be proud of your community are the best,” he said.
First Mistakes
As for the worst story Jeff’s ever written – that’s an easy one. It was the very first he wrote.
“I covered the city council one night – they met on Mondays back then. I probably got an hour of sleep that night worrying about how I was going to write it, then I came in Tuesday and just struggled,” he remembers. “I got it done and felt pretty good about it – if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good for a first story.”
When he collected that issue from the printers, he felt the satisfaction of seeing his story.
“It was kind of cool – look at that, my name right there on the front page,” he said. “We sent it out, then I went back to my desk later that afternoon to reflect on it and realized that all the ‘r’s and ‘t’s were gone.”
A technical issue between the office computers and the printers had caused just those two letters to disappear completely from the story.
“Nobody caught it,” he said. “You’d try to read the story and it was just garbled.”
That same week, Jeff and Yvonne were invited to attend dinner with members of the Wyoming Press Association.
Welcoming them to the fold, another editor commented that his favorite thing about the job was going to the post office on publication day and feeling jazzed to see the people waiting by their boxes, anxious to read the headlines.
This didn’t help. In fact, it made it even clearer to Jeff how many hundreds of people were at that moment looking at his mangled mess of a story.
“They were all looking forward to it and they got that? I thought, no, I’m never going to get over this, I hate this,” he said. “It took a while to get over that panic. But now? The thing that jazzes me up the most is when I go up to the post office and I see those people there waiting for the paper.”
Pride and Joy
What began as a job he was surprised to be doing has become something much more meaningful. Knowing the newspaper is important to its readers, he said, is the driving force.
“Even if someone calls to complain about something we did, it doesn’t make me happy but it sure makes me glad that it means something to them,” he said. “I don’t know what else you can do where you get to take in so much and get to share so much with other people, too. It’s by far the most gratifying thing that I’ve ever done outside of being a parent and grandparent.”
Eventually, Jeff and Yvonne made the decision to take the final step up.
“When we had the chance to buy the papers from my parents in 2018, we did it knowing we probably wouldn’t be at it a lot longer, but we wanted to have our time with it,” he said.
It hasn’t been a decision they regret.
“We thoroughly enjoyed putting our stamp on it and bringing it forward and making sure our employees were in a good place,” he said. “I think we’ve all done a good job putting it into a situation where it’s amazing how smooth it is. The amount of things this staff does is incredible.”
For Jeff, the best part of the job is seeing the quality of what has been produced while knowing the effort that goes into each issue and the pride everyone involved takes in their work.
“It’s never been, ‘Let’s slap it together and get it out of here to get it out of here’,” he said. “We’ve been able to learn and grow and do more, so I think the quality is the thing I’m most proud of. For a small local paper, given what we have and the situation in the country generally with media of all types, I think we do well and I think the paper is remarkably successful. How could you ask for anything more for that?”
Changing Hands
The reason behind Jeff and Yvonne’s decision to step down is simple.
“We’re ready to retire and go grandparent more,” he said with a smile. “The family is spread out quite a ways any more, so we’d like to be able to spend more time with them – and more time fishing.”
As they leave, the Mobergs express their thanks to all the readers who have come with them along the journey.
“The kind words; when you run into somebody and they comment that they like what you’ve done; the people who contribute to the paper from the community,” he said. “When you witness that, it makes you really proud of the people you work with, the things you’re doing and what it means to everybody. That just can’t be beat.”
To the Future
The new owners and publishers of Sundance Times Inc. are Sarah and Wes Pridgeon.
Sarah joined the Times in 2011 as its reporter, a task she continues to relish today.
When the Moorcroft Leader joined the organization in 2016, she took on the role of editor.
Wes joined the family in 2022 as designer and photographer. Since that time, he has taken on numerous additional duties in the running of the business.
Sarah and Wes are excited to continue Crook County’s newspapers and aim to maintain the standard of news and information that is sent out to this community every week.
“It’s been my great fortune to have Jeff as a mentor for all these years, and probably my proudest moment was when he asked us to continue his legacy,” Sarah said. “When I interview people who are taking over from a previous business owner, I always ask them if they have any changes planned. For me, it’s an easy answer: as long as we’re providing the news that this community needs, everything is running exactly as it should be.”
This story was published on June 26, 2025.