The irony wasn’t lost on Tom Bredehoft.
Just a few months after the publisher of The Flagler News swooped in to save The Burlington Record from closing, he learned that he’d be losing two of the Flagler paper’s biggest advertisers — a development that instantly sounded the death knell for the paper he grew up with, eventually purchased and then nurtured for 30 years.
Under a colorful banner wishing readers a Happy New Year, Bredehoft ran the story announcing that The Flagler News would cease publication with Thursday’s edition, the last printing of the weekly launched in 1913 by E.H. Knowlton.
The loss of The Flagler News on his watch cut deeper for Bredehoft than simply closing a business. When he purchased the paper in 1993, it fulfilled a lifelong dream to become a newspaper publisher and occupied such a prominent place in his life that his daughter’s middle name is Knowlton, after the original owner.
Bredehoft described the front page obituary for the Flagler News as the second hardest piece he ever produced for the paper, after the obituary he wrote when his father died.
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Read more“That’s how hard it was to do,” Bredehoft said Thursday evening as he reflected on the decision, which spread by word of mouth and social media.
Reaction has been flowing in from locals upset that they’re losing a local news source but also cognizant of what the publication has meant to Bredehoft.
“Most people are very obviously hurt — I mean, I haven’t even gotten on Facebook or seen anything,” he said. “But I got quite a few texts, quite a few emails, phone calls, just people saying, ‘Wow.’ They knew I wanted to keep it going.”
He realized the paper’s long run would come to a swift and sad conclusion when two prominent advertisers recently told Bredehoft that they’d no longer continue their support. Last month, a local real estate agent gave notice, as she decided to sell her business. Last week, the local grocer said the store’s new app had been performing so well that he’d be discontinuing his regular, nearly full-page ad.
That blow immediately made it clear to Bredehoft that The Flagler News was over. In the article announcing the paper’s demise, Bredehoft stressed his appreciation for the businesses that for so long had been instrumental in helping him publish the weekly.
“The Newspaper business main source of revenue for existence is advertising,” he wrote. “…without it, it doesn’t work.”
The sudden development in his conversation with the grocer at least ended the paper quickly and cleanly, Bredehoft said.
“I guess it was a blessing that he didn’t give me much time to where I didn’t overreact,” he said, noting that without the grocery store ads there was no point in trying to prolong publication. “He’s a dear friend, and he’s kept The Flagler News going for 30 years and I very much appreciated it. I knew the time would come.”
The fact that Bredehoft had assumed publishing The Burlington Record immediately after Prairie Mountain Media — a subsidiary of MediaNews Group, which owns several Colorado papers, including The Denver Post — announced its closure in July gives him some solace.
He has since changed the name of the paper, just 45 miles east of Flagler on Interstate 70, to simply The Record, a move that expedited acquisition of a reduced rate for postal delivery service.
“My thought with changing from The Burlington Record was that I was going to go out even further, and start covering Cheyenne Wells, Kit Carson and just kind of have a wide angle of the whole mideastern Colorado,” Bredehoft explained.
Now, that plan will also allow him to continue covering Flagler as well, in what he now envisions as more of a regional paper. Subscribers to The Flagler News have the option of continuing their subscription through The Record or receiving a refund. Ideally, The Record could add an additional 600-650 subscribers, which in turn would be a boon for advertising.
“The Record’s advertisers have been supporting the paper,” he said, noting that he’ll be closing the office where he produced both The Flagler News and the regional Mile Saver Shopper, which will continue to publish, and consolidating his operations to The Record’s office in Burlington.
“Now I have a lot more time to put into The Record,” he said. “Hopefully we can do some more things and make it even better. The Record was a blessing. I mean, it was just a blessing that I got it.”