The future of the Boulder Weekly is uncertain after the 30-year-old alt-weekly’s owner fired the editor earlier this month, then laid off the entire reporting staff this week.
Former Boulder Weekly editor Shay Castle shared in the paper’s newsletter, which is emailed to about 20,000 subscribers, that she was fired on July 2 “after months of escalating conflict with ownership and continued concern over their practices.”
On Tuesday, she wrote on LinkedIn that “the entire team of Boulder Weekly was fired today, save the special projects manager and bookkeeper. … Apparently, the owner was already in talks last week with someone to sell or salvage what he can. While the Weekly might live on in some form, it will likely be without the team that made the paper what it was these past few years.”
According to the Boulder Weekly’s webpage, the paper’s editorial staff included Castle plus four other reporters and editors, as well as the special projects manager. Other positions include a circulation manager, creative director, graphic designer and five sales and marketing employees. Castle started a fundraiser for the Weekly’s former employees at mightycause.com/story/Ub4smf.
Castle declined an interview. Owner and founder Stewart Sallo didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. The last post on the paper’s website was July 2, while the last print edition was dated July 3.
In December, Castle wrote a Boulder Weekly piece letting readers know Sallo was planning to retire and had agreed to work with the staff on a transition to employee ownership. The Weekly started a campaign to raise $10,000 through the Colorado Gives Foundation. The plan was to work with the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center to explore a co-op model that would give community members a say in business decisions along with a share of the paper’s profits.
Castle last week emailed an update to those who donated through the campaign, letting them know the paper raised the needed money and got a grant to pay for a feasibility analysis from the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center. But, she wrote, as soon as Sallo signed the contract for the study, he stopped communicating with employees and told the nonprofit to do the same.
Her protests over the “communication blackout,” she added, were among the reasons she was fired. On LinkedIn, she wrote that she also faced “continual pressure to give news coverage to advertisers.”
John Lehndorff, who wrote a “Nibbles” column on the local food scene as the Boulder Weekly’s food editor for 10 years, is among those who are no longer writing for the paper. He said communication about the future of the paper had been limited before the staff layoffs were announced. While the freelance invoice he submitted to the paper a few weeks ago didn’t go through, he added, he thought it was a computer glitch. He later learned it was because the freelance budget had been eliminated.
“It’s just sad,” he said. “We went through so much with the pandemic. I really thought they were doing some exciting things. (The current staff members) were making the publication relevant to the younger readership.”
He said he will continue producing Radio Nibbles and Kitchen Table Talk on KGNU but is looking for a new outlet for his food column.
“I hope I find a new home for the column, because there is no shortage of really interesting, wonderful food stuff to write about,” he said.
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