In the course of our news travels, a familiar tale has emerged. Papers that were once independent, like the Salinas Californian and the Del Norte Triplicate, have been bought by corporations and stripped bare. Margins tighten, newsrooms shrink, and the quality of journalism tanks. These newspapers are shells.

The Park Record, based in Park City, Utah, has the opposite story.

For nearly 20 years it was owned by media chains – Swift Communications, Ogden Newspapers – but now, after over 140 years in business, it has made its way back to independent ownership. In 2022, Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince purchased the paper with his wife, Tatiana Prince, and vowed to bring the pared-down paper back to life. They hired Don Rogers as editor/publisher and together they set goals to return the Record to the journalism of old.

“It was just a couple of people working, all filled in with AP stuff, just trying to hang in there,” Rogers said of the paper before the purchase. Syndicating content from the Associated Press can help understaffed papers fill pages, but that content can become a crutch and is part of what disconnected a newspaper from its community.

Under new ownership, Rogers has steered the Record back towards its roots. “We’ve just really gone hard being as local as we possibly can be.”

The Record’s newsroom is a now a dozen strong, filled with journalists who’ve largely relocated for the job – a chance to work in independent news. It prints twice a week, serving a community of around 8,000. Rogers stressed the liveliness of the newsroom and the “task tension” between reporters, “so you can argue like bloody hell about whether something is or is not a story,” amicably of course.

“We’re a vestige of the old journalism,” Rogers said. “But the cost of that is I’ve driven us deep into the red.”

He and the owners planned on some heavy expenditures at first to get the ball rolling, hoping to break even by the 3 – 5-year mark. The challenge is now upon them, and the Record intends to do it the old-fashioned way, through readers and advertising. The paper has seen a 20% year-to-date revenue increase in 2026, topping 10% last year. The owners are looking for something closer to 50%.

“We need to figure out how to get businesses in the area to take advantage of the eyeballs that they get from us,” said Rogers. “It’s an abstract art, advertising."

Park City is the land of particularly wealthy sets of eyeballs. It’s a ski mecca, home to the US Olympic ski team and a playground for rich vacationers. Second homes make up 70% of the housing. People come to unwind, unplug, and, hopefully, pick up the paper.

“This is a goldmine,” Rogers said, gesturing out the window towards Park City’s ritzy downtown. He thinks businesses will advertise if the Record can amass enough readers, particularly wealthy ones.

To do this, Rogers launched a regional version of the paper, the Wasatch Record, covering the county to the south. There are more copies out in the area now, but it’s still free to read, in print and online.

“There’s enough friction from just picking up the paper, you’ll fall in love with it,” Rogers said confidently. The trick is then to monetize that love.

Rogers acknowledged that inspiring affection for the news is difficult these days, and grudgingly admitted that the Record is tackling social media as a way to build visibility and trust.

“I’m an old curmudgeon,” he said. “But I have a staff that gets it.”

Rogers is more focused on telling local stories that the people of Park City care about. This required some of what he calls “eat-your-peas” government/education journalism, but there’s plenty of room for excitement. Park City’s Sundance Film Festival, one of the most important film events in the world, is moving to Boulder, CO, in 2027, and residents are mourning the cultural loss. On a more immediate note, the Rock Canyon Fire was encroaching on Park City as we spoke, making for some high-stakes writing.

With wealthy owners, the Record has the bandwidth right now to do widespread, diligent local coverage. But Rogers knows that could go away. Though the owners don’t have editorial veto power, they do control the cash.

“It’s not the Washington Post or the LA Times,” Rogers said. “But we’re still in that same kind of model, so we’re subject to what they want to do.”

This may mean going nonprofit, using AI for layout, or even a shift away from print – Rogers made no illusions about the viability of a paper product in the digital age. But the Record is putting up a fight.

“We’re just like you guys, slugging along,” he said. He’s confident that the news will be able to adapt, as long as we can keep people reading.