Newspaper War Erupts on the Plains

Between the bird-feed plant and the railroad viaduct, a weathered sign proclaims just about everything this town of 6,000 has to offer: 25 churches, 10 motels, 14 restaurants and 29 service clubs.

Add three newspapers, with this month’s debut of the Sidney Daily Sun.

“I would guess this is the only town with 6,000 people and three newspapers,” said Jack Lowe, editor emeritus of the 126-year-old Sidney Telegraph.

The Sidney Daily Sun is gearing up for an old-fashioned newspaper war against the Telegraph, which switched from five days a week to three a year ago, and the Panhandle Town and Country, a weekly that started up six months before that.

“I have not seen a time since the 1950s when this town ever had three newspapers,” said Lowe, 89. “I would suspect it will be a matter of who gets tired of losing their money first.”

Many people of this town surrounded by fields of wheat and sunflowers want all the papers to survive, but that may be impossible.

“It’s hard to see that advertising in a town that size would be able to support three of them,” said Miles Groves, vice president and chief economist for the Newspaper Assn. of America.

Former Mayor Bob VanVleet thinks the Telegraph’s downsizing has left an opening for his Daily Sun, a Tuesday-through-Saturday paper. An entrepreneur, VanVleet watched closely when Western Publishing Co. bought the Telegraph, cut its publication dates and removed the printing press.

“A town without a press has no voice,” he said. “I wanted to buy the Telegraph, but they wouldn’t sell. So I started planning my own newspaper.”

Unlike the two other papers, the Sun will carry news and photos from Associated Press. In addition to Nebraska sports, it will cover Colorado teams. The town is a three-hour drive from Denver but six hours from Lincoln.

The Sun’s 12 employees include sports editor Doug Mitchell, who was working for the Houston Post when it closed in 1995.

“Most of us are used to seeing newspapers fall by the wayside,” Mitchell said. “It is the chance of a lifetime to start a newspaper from scratch.”

The paper has a new computer system and a 29-year-old full-color press.

Four blocks away are the offices of the Telegraph, which employs 12 people, has a circulation of 3,100 and describes itself as “hometown names, faces and stories.”

“Speaker to discuss chastity on Sept. 23,” said a front-page headline in the eight-page Sept. 16 issue of the Telegraph over a story about a middle-school speaker. A black-and-white photo of six Sidney High School football players visiting an elementary school shared the page.

Western Publishing prints the Telegraph in Scottsbluff, 100 miles away.

“The Telegraph is being controlled by people outside of Sidney, and I don’t think that’s good,” motel manager Wendell Wagner said.

From his office in North Platte, 120 miles to the east, Western Publishing Vice President Richard Cole said the Telegraph has staff members who live and work in Sidney.

The Panhandle Town and Country, a 32-page tabloid that was founded by former Telegraph publisher Don Evans and has a circulation of about 1,100, featured a front-page story recently about plans for a fall festival in nearby Dalton. In his “Over the Coffee” column, Evans wrote about getting his 7-year-old grandson ready for school.

Sidney resident Keith Yocum--a self-described newspaper fanatic who reads the Telegraph, Denver Post and Omaha World-Herald--said, “I think it’s great to have a choice. Whether it’s economically feasible remains to be seen.”