The Aspen Times
Circulation 6,500[1] | | |
Website | aspentimes |
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The Aspen Times is a free, 6,500-circulation daily newspaper in the ski resort town of Aspen, Colorado, United States, with a history dating back to 1881.
History
The Aspen Weekly Times' first issue was published April 23, 1881 when Aspen was a silver mining town, and the purpose of the newspaper was to bring news about the outside world to miners. The original owner was D.H. Waite & Co under the leadership of Davis Hanson Waite who sold the paper to B. Clark Wheeler in 1885 and later became Governor of Colorado. Within months, Wheeler converted the paper into a daily. Wheeler was a promoter and had various business interests. In 1880, Wheeler changed the name of the city from Ute City to Aspen. In the 1890s, the paper returned to a weekly publication schedule as the population of Aspen dropped due to the bust in silver prices.
In 1956,
A daily again
In 1988, Dunaway hired
In 1990, Price covered the arrest of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson on sex assault charges. The charges were dropped after Price reported that the alleged victim was an undercover agent who fabricated the assault claim in order to give the district attorney a pretext for searching Thompson's Woody Creek ranch for drugs. Thompson reprinted some of Price's stories in his 1990 book "Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream."
In 1992, Dunaway sold the Times to a group led by Loren Jenkins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post. Jenkins improved the newspaper by redesigning it and bringing in national and international news and cultural reporting and reviews from the services of the New York Times and the Washington Post. He also gave the newspaper an editorial edge that sought to slow down rampant development and preserve the local values and nature that had always made the Roaring Fork valley special. Jenkins left town in 1996, taking the post of foreign desk editor at National Public Radio.
In 1995, the ownership of the paper changed again, and this time the group included as many as nine investors by some reports. Among them were local businessmen George Stranahan, Michael McVoy and longtime Times writer and novelist Andy Stone.[2]
Swift Communications
On December 1, 1999, the Aspen Times was purchased by Swift Communications of Carson City, Nevada in a regional newspaper buy up.[3] Swift moved all printing operations to Gypsum, Colorado. Swift Communications owns at least ten other Colorado resort town newspapers. All of their online newspapers share the same content management system and as of May, 2011 the ability for readers to leave comments about articles was indefinitely removed, due to issues of incivility.[4][5][6]
In Fall of 2011, the Aspen Times re-enabled anonymous commenting for users with an active Facebook account.[7]
The Aspen Times printed both weekly and daily editions until 2004, when the weekly was converted into a Sunday edition. At that point, the Times Daily went from Monday-Friday to seven days a week. The word "Daily" was dropped from the title of the daily paper in the 1990s.
On April 13, 2022 Vladislav Doronin, an international real estate developer and art collector, who was involved in a real estate development at the entrance to the Aspen Mountain ski area, sued Swift Communications for defamation with respect to the newspaper's coverage and characterization of Doronin. The legal action was settled by confidential agreement and dismissed May 27, 2022. During the pendency of the suit, coverage of Doronin was suspended by the publisher.[8] Tension over the matter resulted in firing of the editor, Andrew Travers.[9]
References
- ^ "Marketing & Advertising in Aspen, Colorado". Swift Local Solutions. Retrieved March 29, 2023.
- ^ "About Us". Aspen Journalism. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
- ISBN 1610752325.
- ^ Bangert, Randy (April 30, 2011). "Web comments for The Tribune take a holiday". Greeley Tribune. Retrieved August 26, 2011.
- ^ Collebrusco, Anthony. "Civil comments for news websites". Digital News Test Kitchen. Archived from the original on July 16, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2011.
- ^ Outing, Steve. "#$^&%#@) it! … Keep it civil, commenters!". Digital News Test Kitchen. Archived from the original on July 14, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2011.
- ^ "Aspen Times online comments return". Aspen Times. October 21, 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
- ^ Allison Pattillo (June 2, 2022). "Publisher's note: The beginning of a new beginning". The Aspen Times. Allison Pattillo. Retrieved August 19, 2022.
- ^ Andrew Travers (August 18, 2022). "END TIMES IN ASPEN: How a Soviet-born developer and a West Virginia billionaire destroyed a 141-year-old Colorado newspaper". The Atlantic. Retrieved August 19, 2022.