WESTCLIFFE — A newspaper feud at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains has veered toward violence with editors armed, lawsuits flying, and threats from riled-up residents forcing the closure of a 140-year-old Main Street newsroom for safety.

It got to the point that attorneys last week coaxed editors of the Wet Mountain Tribune and the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel to sit for a 21st-century solution — mediation via Zoom — and defuse tensions reminiscent of the 19th-century wild west.

“We have a diversity of thought here. That’s good,” Westcliffe Mayor Paul Wenke said. “I sure hope it doesn’t lead to violence. But it could.”

Whether or not a truce holds, staffers at the competing weekly publications plan to provide robust election-year coverage and commentary for residents of Westcliffe (population 477) and adjacent Silver Cliff (population 688) in rural Custer County.

The rivalry stands out because thousands of towns in the United States lack even one local newspaper, surveys show. The Sentinel and the Tribune have survived on revenues from business ads, paid legal notices, and subscriptions by readers here and in more than a dozen other states.

At the right-wing Sentinel, managing editor and president George Gramlich, 73, and his staff work wearing holstered guns as they churn out overtly partisan news — “a different view from the same mountains.” They contend too many of the elected officials in heavily Republican Custer County are Republicans In Name Only (RINOs), leaning liberal. Gramlich has run the Sentinel since 2013 after he and his wife left their cattle ranch in the Adirondack Mountains of New York as “political and 2nd Amendment refugees,” he said in a January 2022 podcast interview with a supporter from Texas who had attended a Westcliffe gun rights parade.

He partnered with a friend who ran a southern Colorado patriots club andenlisted the support of local “heritage” families to launch the Sentinel — “to reflect Custer County’s politics and culture” and “keep tabs on local government,” Gramlich said on the podcast.“We are going to win this country back at the local level….. If you have a media outlet, you can influence a lot of different things.”

Gramlich, who declined to discuss the rivalry with The Post on the record, has blasted the Tribune as “extremely liberal” and taunted Tribune publisher and editor Jordan Hedberg, 37, as “Jordy Red Bug” repeatedly in stories, including reports that falsely claimed Hedberg was convicted of domestic violence, a “predator” who had been “attacking women for years” and was “ripping off” the county in publishing its required legal notices. “Sweet Dreams, Red Bug. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. ….. We’ll see you around,” one story said.

Outside the courthouse in May, a man made a gesture at Hedberg with a raised thumb and pointed a forefinger, saying “we will see you around, Jordy” — leading to a sheriff’s investigation.

The Sentinel’s volunteer staff of sevendelights in tweaking their paid competitors at the Tribune, which claims on its masthead to have been operating since 1883. Longtime Tribune reporter W.A. Ewing calls the Sentinel “the neo-fascist agitprop pamphlet up the street” and said it is creating confusion and doubt about government — “softening up the citizenry for authoritarian rule” — and raising risks of violence.

At the Tribune, Hedberg helps out covering events including county commission meetings and high school sports. He graduated from the local high school as a salutatorian before attending college in Illinois, where he played football as an offensive lineman. He manages cattle and describes himself as a conservative who voted once for Trump.

“I am here to try to figure out what the truth is for my readers,” Hedberg said. “If we weren’t here, it could be worse.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a man stood outside the Tribune’s red door shouting: ” ‘Hey you communists get out of town’, ” Ewing said. Others have entered the office hurling insults. In October, Hedberg shut down the office — “too much glass,” he said — and staffers for seven months worked remotely.

Hedberg re-opened the newsroom in June, though his spouse, who works as the assistant publisher and bookkeeper, remains home. Last week, he slid open the center drawer in his door-facing news office desk, showing a pistol he keeps for protection.

“It’s a frontier town,” said Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith, a former Colorado State Patrol trooper.

The newspaper competition means “access to information is better,” Smith said. “I always like being able to hear the other side of the story.”

He confirmed the parking lot confrontation, saying deputies investigated and that Hedberg declined to press charges after the man who allegedly threatened him contacted him and apologized.

But Hedberg has pressed ahead with a defamation lawsuit against Gramlich and the Sentinel in state court, seeking tens of thousands in damages for lost revenues. He submitted a court affidavit that says published lies hurt his business and reputation and forced him and his wife to consider “giving up on our dream of cattle ranching and running the community newspaper” and moving away.

Custer County District Court Judge Lynette Wenner rejected a motion by Gramlich to dismiss the case under the state’s “anti-SLAPP” (strategic lawsuits against public interest) law, which lets defendants ask for a case to be dropped based on the First Amendment right of free speech in matters of public interest. Wenner determined Hedberg’s lawsuit has merit. Attorneys volunteered to try mediation to settle the case and avoid a costly trial. Hedberg said he would demand damages in addition to a published apology.

A tentative settlement reached Wednesday includes an agreement for Gramlich to publish apologies. Other elements were kept confidential.

The Tribune previously won after filing a lawsuit in federal court challenging county commissioners’ 2021 vote to shift their contract for publishing required legal notices from the Tribune to the Sentinel. The Tribune argued commissioners voted in retribution for a newspaper investigation of the questionable credentials of an optometrist the commissioners hired as the county’s top public health official. That victory restored the Tribune as the county’s paper of record along with around $5,000 in monthly income.

The Sentinel draws support from a group of about 50 right-wing extremists, “a lot of them transplanted here, thinking this was a right-wing conservative Mayberry,” Hedberg said. “They want to make (Custer County) into something more than it is,” he said, pointing to gun rights enthusiasts who have flocked to open-carry parades through Westcliffe and packed public meetings shouting at government officials.

The Sentinel’s partisan news has created a civic climate where “no good people will run for county commissioner because they don’t want to get smeared,” Hedberg said.

In November, Hedberg will run as an unaffiliated candidate for the county commission, he said, casting his campaign as a longshot, motivated partly to encourage other residents of Custer County to override fears and seek elected positions.

Historically, multiple news sheets and newspapers such as the Rustler and the Daily Herald competed in Custer County, where mining in the 1880s jacked the population of Silver Cliff over 5,000 — the third most populous town in the state. The Tribune endured into the age of electronic delivery (combined with mailing print editions) due to former publisher Jim Little, who bought the Tribune in 1981 and raised the circulation as high as 3,200 before selling the newspaper in 2018 to Hedberg.

“For me, the Sentinel was never more than a burr in the saddle,” Little said, though “their explicit goal was to put me out of business.”

The Westcliffe newspaper rivalry “looks pretty ‘Wild West,’” said Denver-based attorney Dan Ernst, who represented Hedberg in the defamation lawsuit and mediation.

“The argument is that either (Gramlich) was reckless, or he made statements that he knew were false,” Ernst said. However, the recent parking lot incident and other potential violence “is not on George and his publication. That’s his readership, escalating things. And that is where these two parties have an incentive to resolve things and move forward in a way that calms things down. You can have two rival opinions in newspapers without it turning into physical threats. ….. We’re hoping that, moving forward, we can get some kind of agreement to bring some civility back.”

On balance, Custer County residents benefit from news competition, town manager Caleb Patterson said, adding that both publications present more-less factual accounts of local government meetings combined with divergent commentary.

“It’s good for a man to take in both sides,” Patterson said. The feuding editors bring drama — “good for small-town talk.”

But towns also require “unity” to get things done, such as maintaining sewage infrastructure, he said. “Polarization? Nobody wants that.”

There’s enough news happening that the Tribune’s 1,200 paid subscriptions “could be a lot higher,” Hedberg said.

“The future for community newspapers is unlimited.”

Originally Published: July 15, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.