Tiny Town Reads All About It With Newspaper War

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 today’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 thrice weekly publication 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.”

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 the 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, home of the University of Nebraska.

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

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

Four blocks away are the offices for 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 Tuesday 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.

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 this week 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.” But he added: “Whether it’s economically feasible remains to be seen.”