{"id":31356,"date":"2023-10-04T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/an-old-fashioned-newspaper-war-inspired-by-modern-politics-is-raging-in-westcliffe-and-dividing-readers\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:39:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:39:34","slug":"an-old-fashioned-newspaper-war-inspired-by-modern-politics-is-raging-in-westcliffe-and-dividing-r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/an-old-fashioned-newspaper-war-inspired-by-modern-politics-is-raging-in-westcliffe-and-dividing-r\/","title":{"rendered":"An old-fashioned newspaper war inspired by modern politics is raging in Westcliffe and dividing\u00a0readers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Westcliffe\u2019s
Westcliffe\u2019s Main Street, Sept. 8, 2023, in Custer County. The town on the west side of the Sangre de Cristo Range has approximately 400 residents, according to the 2022 Census. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

WESTCLIFFE \u2014 Main Street of this postcard-pretty town not far from the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is just six blocks long.<\/p>\n

Yet there are two weekly newspapers \u2014\u00a0both thriving, both making money, both all in on a newspaper war.<\/p>\n

The Wet Mountain Tribune, its rose-red door in a line of art galleries and coffee shops, has been around for more than 100 years, dating back to the days when the town was bustling with silver miners. The Sangre de Cristo Sentinel is written in what was once a home on the opposite side of Main Street, where a banner proclaims the 10-year-old newspaper offers \u201ca different view from the same mountains\u201d and a \u201cTrump Won\u201d sign is staked in the grass.<\/p>\n

Expect a strong reaction if you bring up the fact that Custer County, with only 5,000 people, has two newspapers, while some other towns have none at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately,\u201d some say, shaking their heads. Others roll their eyes and sigh. Some are thrilled a new paper came to town.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s toxic,\u201d said Angela Arterburn, who has lived in Westcliffe for 26 years, owns a gallery filled with fine-art pottery and reads The Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt creates so much division, and it\u2019s childish sometimes,\u201d said Stacy Fite, who sells guns, ammo and fly fishing equipment on Main Street and reads The Sentinel. \u201cBut it was super nice to get the other paper in here because the other one was so left-leaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne is gossip. One is news,\u201d said Eileen Boughton, a Tribune subscriber who lives in Wetmore, just up the road by the Wet Mountains.<\/p>\n

People prefer one or the other, although some read both. A few local businesses will advertise only in the paper that aligns with their political views. The Tribune sees itself as just-the-facts, traditional journalism, though some in town say it leans liberal. The Sentinel, the \u201cVoice of Conservative Colorado!\u201d is proudly right-wing, with a page every issue dedicated to the Second Amendment and a newsroom where reporters and editors carry sidearms.<\/p>\n

County politics are at the center of all of it.<\/p>\n

The Sentinel pushed for a recall of all three of the county\u2019s commissioners in 2017, calling them \u201cliberals posing as Republicans\u201d who stopped going to Custer County Republican meetings and snubbed the annual Republican Lincoln Day Dinner after their elections. Two were ousted in the recall, and one of their replacements was recalled in August in an election again backed by the Sentinel.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the Tribune wrote an investigative piece that exposed the questionable credentials of an optometrist hired by commissioners as the county\u2019s top public health official during the height of the COVID pandemic. And when county commissioners subsequently voted to designate the Sentinel \u2014 replacing the Tribune \u2014 as the new \u201cpaper of record,\u201d meaning it would get the estimated $5,000 in monthly revenue for printing required legal notices, the Tribune sued the county and won.<\/p>\n

The conflict between the two papers has gotten so ugly that coffee shops have taken sides and the Sentinel owner calls the Tribune owner names in his columns. \u201cOl\u2019 Jordy \u2018Red Bug\u2019 Hedberg caused Custer County a LOT of money and trouble again,\u201d went a recent column questioning the Tribune owner Jordan Hedberg\u2019s reporting on the causes of the recall election. The Sentinel has poked fun of Hedberg\u2019s \u201cover-the-top COVID phobia,\u201d calling him \u201cRed Bug,\u201d the term for the virus, first detected in China, that has circulated on the internet.<\/p>\n

Now, much of the town calls Hedberg \u201cRed Bug,\u201d too.<\/p>\n

Locals say that while each newspaper has contributed to a resurgence in interest in local politics, the battle has mainly served to further polarize Westcliffe. And for some, the negative vibes are too much \u2014 they won\u2019t buy either paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a small town,\u201d said Dwayne Chambers, while enjoying a coffee at the Sugarlump Co. and energized by a recent community potluck on Main Street. \u201cEverybody knows everybody and we all know what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGive the people what they want\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Custer County is an 8,000-foot plateau dotted with cattle ranches and hay fields. It has, on average, the oldest population in Colorado, and comes in second nationally behind a county in Florida.<\/p>\n

It leans conservative, Christian and retired.<\/p>\n

The newspaper that has served the county since 1883 was not conservative enough for the likes of George Gramlich and a group of fellow retirees and ranchers who got together 11 years ago and decided to make their own. The final straw came after the Tribune refused to publish some of their letters to the editor, Gramlich said.<\/p>\n

He sums it plainly: \u201cThe Tribune was run by a liberal guy. The paper was slanted liberal. Let\u2019s start a conservative one with a conservative, Christian slant and hopefully give the people here what they want.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing took off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gramlich, 73, said the Sentinel prints 1,300 copies every week, and its subscription base is gaining on the Tribune, which has about 2,000 print subscribers in a county of about 5,300 people. \u201cWe are probably just a little behind them,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s going from nothing to a brand-new newspaper against a 100-year-old paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sentinel has attracted readers in Pueblo, Fremont and Chaffee counties who were craving a conservative voice. It prints 24 pages every week, in color, and has three employees and several freelancers. None of the founders have journalism experience, and Gramlich is nothing but open about the paper\u2019s political bent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to BS our readers at all. We tell them exactly who we are up front,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been reading newspapers since I was 12 years old and I\u2019m an old man \u2014 there ain\u2019t a paper in the country that is unbiased.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newspaper not only caters to conservatives, but also to older people. While a page toward the back of the paper is dedicated to gun news, another page each week is filled with full-color memes \u2014 the same ones younger people already saw on social media. An edition this summer included a photo of mountaineers trudging up Mount Everest with the caption, \u201cA rare photograph of my parents on their way to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur readers literally laugh out loud at the memes,\u201d Gramlich said. \u201cThe paper gets passed around a lot, neighbor to neighbor. To them, it\u2019s almost like old-style cartoons coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some compare the Sentinel\u2019s style to the sensational and inflammatory journalism of the 1800s, when dozens of one-page or two-page \u201cnewspapers\u201d were handed out in the streets of Westcliffe and next door in Silver Cliff during the silver and gold boom.<\/p>\n

Tribune owner Hedberg accused Gramlich of egging on a \u201cmob\u201d that cussed at and ridiculed county commissioners at a meeting in July. And Gramlich wrote in 2018 that the Colorado Press Association was part of the \u201cprogressive deep state that is destroying our once free society and replacing it with a soon-to-fail socialistic nightmare\u201d because the trade group supported a national request that newspapers fight back against former President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cenemy of the people\u201d rhetoric targeting journalists. (The Colorado Sun is an association member.)<\/p>\n

The Sentinel\u2019s politics, though, are attracting subscribers, Gramlich said. It saw a boost during the pandemic, when the paper published stories making fun of masks and calling vaccines dangerous, and referred to the coronavirus as \u201cWuFlu.\u201d The commissioner recalls also have brought in new subscribers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was big-time politics here for five or six months,\u201d he said. \u201cWe successfully recalled two of them and just missed the third guy by 60 votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gramlich, who said he retired in Westcliffe after running an international insurance software company and raising cattle in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, said that having two opposing newspapers keeps the town energized and engaged.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a healthy thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a fun adventure. We love poking fun at the lib paper and they love poking fun at us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have an agenda. It\u2019s called the truth.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

County commissioners who voted to strip the Tribune of its status as the \u201cpaper of record\u201d didn\u2019t try to hide why. They stated during that public meeting in January 2022 that they were tired of owner Jordan Hedberg\u2019s negative stories.<\/p>\n

Hedberg not only exposed the questionable credentials of the public health director, but published an article in 2021 noting that one commissioner showed up to a meeting knowing he had COVID and infected four others during the \u201csuper spreader\u201d event. Then there was the story revealing that commissioners voted in March 2021 to end all COVID restrictions, declaring the county was \u201cgoing off the grid,\u201d despite that state officials had not approved the move.<\/p>\n

Commissioners voted to make the Sentinel the official paper of record even though the Tribune\u2019s bid, at 9 cents per printed line for legal notices, was half the cost. Clearly, Hedberg said in his lawsuit, public officials were retaliating against his small-town paper in violation of First Amendment rights to a free press.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit was settled in December, with the Tribune retaining its decades-long status as the paper of record \u2014\u00a0for at least the next four years.<\/p>\n

Since then, local politics and the newspaper war in Westcliffe have not calmed down. The sole commissioner to vote against awarding the bid for legal notices to the Sentinel was the one who was just recalled.<\/p>\n

The contentiousness, and particularly the way the other newspaper covered the pandemic and emboldened its readers to ignore safety precautions, can get depressing, said Hedberg, who grew up in Westcliffe. \u201cI expected people in this community to come together and try to protect the vulnerable and the elderly, and instead it turned into \u2018I can get whoever I want sick. I can kill whoever I want. If you don\u2019t like it, you can stay home,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hedberg, 36, said a few former subscribers got so nasty, calling him a communist, for example, that he canceled their subscriptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Well, it\u2019s great that you believe that. You\u2019re not welcome to subscribe to The Tribune,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cSome people are always going to hate you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hedberg doesn\u2019t consider the Sentinel a legitimate newspaper, and the war between the two isn\u2019t a traditional one based on which paper gets the most scoops. During the first few years of its existence, the Sentinel didn\u2019t cover much local news, instead running reprints from other publications, including gun magazines. It was during COVID, when Gramlich began writing columns, that the conservative paper started to gain a greater following.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see them as competitors. I still kind of don\u2019t,\u201d Hedberg said. \u201cBut, you know, I\u2019ve got to deal with a full-on MAGA publication and we\u2019re a two-paper town. Their main business, that they claim, is to put us out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hedberg, who bought the Tribune in 2018, majored in history and wrote for his college newspaper for fun. He worked as an investment broker in Denver, drove a ski shuttle, and moved back to the country to raise grass-fed beef and organic vegetables. Then he added a job as a reporter for the Tribune in 2015, making $11 per hour.<\/p>\n

When the long-time owner of the Tribune wanted to retire, and didn\u2019t want to sell to a newspaper chain, he asked Hedberg if he would take over. Hedberg runs the newsroom while his wife, Alyssa, handles the layout and bookkeeping, and they manage a staff of part-time employees and freelancers.<\/p>\n

The paper has almost 2,000 print subscribers, plus 310 digital subscribers and 4,000 followers of its Facebook page. That\u2019s in a county with 5,300 people \u201con a good day,\u201d Hedberg said. \u201cWintertime it gets pretty quiet, because there\u2019s no skiing, there\u2019s no river,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of wind.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sees himself as a curator of history, recording what\u2019s important now and for the future. His news stories are straightforward, listing who voted for what in the county commissioners meeting and what they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I do have an agenda. It\u2019s called the truth,\u201d Hedberg said, \u201cand I\u2019m extremely biased about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tribune picked up about 50 new subscribers as it reported on this summer\u2019s commissioner recall election because it focused on fact-checking and covering the issues \u2014 the opposite strategy of the other paper, Hedberg said. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t really tell what the truth was if you were reading them,\u201d he said. \u201cDo you want the paper that literally insults people on every page in every edition?\u201d<\/p>\n

Herberg feels a sense of duty to provide what he says is the only real newspaper left in Custer County. When moved to Westcliffe as a kid in 1999, locals could get The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Pueblo Chieftain, Ca\u00f1on City Daily Record and Wall Street Journal delivered to their doors. Not anymore.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s exhausting at times, and tough writing critical pieces about people he is bound to run into on Main Street, but Hedberg refuses to portray Westcliffe as the fictional Mayberry.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re very careful about how you write things. You are going to see him on the street,\u201d he said, referring to a county commissioner or anyone else he writes about. \u201cYou might see him at church or the liquor store or whatever. But over time, people start to realize that they might not agree with what we write, but they know that we did it because it was the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While many Colorado communities are losing their local newspapers, Custer County readers are divided between a traditional, 100-year-old paper and a right-wing newcomer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81413,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31356\/revisions\/81413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31356"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}