Predictable

The Estes Park Trail Gazette, from objective criteria or anecdotal evidence, is having problems.  The classic indication of a newspaper in trouble is a delay in getting their paper out on schedule.  Decrease in size/format is another worry (remember how the Rocky Mountain News kept reformatting and shrinking, even eventually cohabiting with the Post, until if finally disappeared?), but hitting doorsteps with Shinkansen-like regularity is paramount in quelling investor or reader or subscriber nervousness.  I get it, Wednesday was a major blizzard that shut down roads statewide (with travel treacherous but possible locally), but it wasn't like the blizzard wasn't predicted in advance (the announcement that the school was closing because of weather was provided Tuesday night), and, more to the point, it wasn't like anyone who could assemble a paper was in the Trail office Wednesday afternoon, because they weren't.

When I visited a Trail office devoid of people (except for a salesman) on Wednesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m., I filed away a silent prediction as I was leaving that the Friday paper wouldn't get out on time.  The Trail is printed in Berthoud, as is the Reporter-Herald, and I didn't see anything about the Reporter-Herald not getting out in time, so I doubt if this was a Berthoud problem.  It appears from the Trail's website that content was available (Wednesday's edition was thin as gruel, but Wednesday's paper is always thin), and they assigned reporters to cover all the requisite bases (hospital, town government, Rotary), who appeared to have filed their stories, lengthy (almost too lengthy, as if they needed to fill empty column inches) and on time, but layout was going to be an obvious problem with no one physically around to perform it, even if the whole thing could conceivably be assembled via a smart phone in Prague.

And thus, we have no physical paper of record today, Friday, the day the paper of record has arrived like clockwork for the past, what, 48 years, essentially since the merger?  I hope this delay turns out to be an isolated event and doesn't portend future problems, because if the paper fails to publish on schedule, they may jeopardize their right to publish public notices.  This is Kai Ryssdal, for Marketplace.  Clink Clink duh-duh Clink Clink.