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, Publisher
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Publisher's Note: The decade that brought JH Weekly | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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