Publisher's Note: The decade that brought JH Weekly
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
By Mary Grossman
On
a morning back in November 2002, KMTN announced that the Jackson Hole
News and the Jackson Hole Guide would be merging; and that the
forthcoming issue - and I remember the date – Nov. 20, would be the
first issue of the Jackson Hole News&Guide. With some niche
publishing under my belt, I thought it would be a good time to start a
new local newspaper.
I don’t know why we were all shocked after
years endured two, fat weekly papers and their corresponding dailies.
And in retrospect, it was astonishing that this town could support
those double behemoths. But despite their sometimes annoying duplicity,
residents were able to make allegiances, take sides. They found refuge
in one paper when the other had tweaked them just so. And advertisers
valued the competition that kept advertising rates down.
So just
18 days after the merger announcement, the first issue of Planet
Jackson Hole hit the streets. Rich Anderson, editor; Ed Bushnell and
Melissa Davidson reporters, current aArt director Jeana Haarman came on
board a few issues later, and JH Weekly’s current editor, Matthew
Irwin, was our very first delivery driver. We eagerly capitalized on
the animosity from readers and advertisers who bristled at the thought
of living in a one-horse town, I among them.
This issue happens
is the first of Volume 8, and looking back over these past seven years,
I’d like to think that Planet Jackson Hole, now JH Weekly, has taken
Jackson Hole to a place it hadn’t been before; a place with frank
restaurant reviews, radical political opinion, streakers, bloggers and
a self-deprecating look at Jackson Hole. And though we’ve spent much of
the last seven years being boycotted, banished or sued, we’re proud to
have started Wyoming’s first and only alternative weekly. JHW
– Mary Grossman, PublisherPERMALINK:
Publisher's Note: The decade that brought JH Weekly | Planet JH News Article: Editorial
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