Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

This week we complete two full years as the weekly newspaper the Northern Wyoming News and what a year it was.

We started year two out with an open house in February. Yes, it was pre-COVID or rather COVID-19 was just beginning to be talked about but there were no mask mandates, no businesses were closed, life was continuing as normal. We had a nice turnout for the open house despite the cold, snowy, windy day.

Then March came and COVID had Wyoming canceling sports and state health orders were closing businesses.

We closed our office to the public for a short time but we were open every day, Monday through Friday and never missed a publication. We had people work from home.

While COVID certainly highlighted our second year as the Northern Wyoming News, and definitely dominated the front page for many weeks, there was much to continue to chronicle in our community.

But we are not here in the first week of February to take a look back at 2020, we did that last month.

Rather, despite a global pandemic, despite the many struggles of local businesses, despite many events being canceled, as your local newspaper, your main source for community news, we were there to document with word and image the news of 2020 in Washakie County and the Big Horn Basin.

Yes, when things were happening fast and furious with the pandemic and numbers of cases were changing daily (remember when the state did two reports a day) we found a way to keep the public and our readers informed.

We continue to provide weekday updates on COVID numbers on our website at http://www.wyodaily.com. If there is breaking news on COVID we update that on the weekend as well.

With COVID we got away from posting many statewide stories on our website, stories that we no longer have room for in our print publication, but we are getting back to posting those for our readers.

And if there is breaking news in and around our community then we do not wait for the next issue. We will report on it on our website. The following print edition usually has a lot more details than a breaking news report will.

I was talking to a NWN reader earlier this week and they asked how the newspaper was doing and I told him we are busy as usual. He remarked that he still misses the daily paper, as many of our readers do at times, but he also admitted that we have been able to offer more indepth stories on local events and people.

Others have remarked that the weekly newspaper format gives them time to get through all the stories before the next issue, admitting that as a daily they didn’t always have time to read the entire newspaper before the next one came out.

2020 and our second year as the Northern Wyoming News yes brought its challenges. Whether it was covering council meetings, school board meetings and commissioner meetings in person or via Zoom, or even last week covering the Wyoming State Legislature’s virtual session, no matter what happened or in what fashion it occurred, we were there and we will continue to be there to report on the issues that impact us as a community.

We understand people have become disenchanted with mainstream media and the reporting on politics. They are becoming disheartened by the censorship of social media.

No one is censoring the news at the Northern Wyoming News. Our goal each and every week is to report the facts accurately and fairly.

Last year I remarked that this newspaper, which started as the weekly The Worland Grit in 1905, had come full circle back to a weekly publication, and was still going strong after 115 years.

Well, now in year 116, our job remains the same —

You see it does not matter if we are a weekly or a daily newspaper, or year one or 116, our job remains the same — covering local people and events and telling the stories that matter to you while working to help make this community a great place to live and work.

We hope you join us for our journey in year 3/116 and beyond.