Whoa. That went quick. A blink, and at the same time it feels like I’ve been here forever.

A year ago pretty much to the day today, the 14th, I’d just driven in from Aspen, still editing another ski town newspaper.

A blink before that I was starting in Aspen. A blink before that we all were still underwater dealing with Covid, and my company of 22 years was dealing with it by selling to another company, an event that soon proved way more personally disruptive than a pandemic.   

Another blink, maybe two, before that I was well settled into a routine in the Sierra Nevada foothills and Lake Tahoe ski towns with the most beautiful commute in the world.

Improbably, I had found myself responsible for our California division, in the role of longtime mentors, having transferred from Vail to what I figured would be the final run in my second career.

Not that I was anywhere near thinking about finishing out. Still way too much left to do, and the work still was way too much fun. Besides, I was and still am caught up in a sacred quest, to me that higher purpose.

Quixotic

Think holy grail. That’s my own weird fixation for journalism, that rough path to truth in real time. Very rough, I realize.

But history is contemplation of a rearview mirror. Religion is the inverse of journalism’s use of evidence, cart before horse. Science necessarily is too narrow for this task, and flounders outside math and physics. Fictional forms don’t claim to be anything other than whoppers. Marketing, PR and politics try to disguise the fact, often with remarkable success.

Social media is pure funhouse, and social cliques are mistaken for the whole of a community, both rotten with rumor.

No, our only real hope to understand life in the here and now is through journalism — even shallow, half-wrong, sloppy journalism tackled in great haste.

This is a bit like Winston Churchill’s assessment of democracy: worst form of governance other than all the rest. And the follow-on quip about the same going for capitalism.

Voter/buyer beware, then, and reader be alert. Personally, I appreciate the onus on critical thinking, as painful and rewarding as other forms of exercise.

This is a quest worthy of news consumer and reporter, work you can never get exactly right, only improve on your ability to understand.

Journey

The second sale six months later started me on my way, made a mess in the wake of a defamation lawsuit in Aspen look like fun in summer 2022.

This was when the quest mutated to a hero’s journey. I mean basically a literary or mythical term, not that I would presume beyond the point that we each are our own protagonists in life, flawed as we are.

It did boil down to math for me: The newest owners meant to severely subtract, and the paper in Aspen might have been a mess, but it still intended to staff up to the job. My main work would be to do that in time for the fall elections.

I helped The Aspen Times — I think I helped, anyway — but the experience helped me more. We find our grooves, which is great. Still, it’s not the same as growth. Aspen served as wellspring.

I’d been a traditional publisher for 14 years, long enough I had a ton to relearn and learn fresh answering the call as editor. I left home largely behind, embarking on a ship captain’s life. Plenty of joys and trials, most simply put. But never bored.

The next port of call was well timed, this mission more compelling, the Aspen mess largely fixed, lessons largely learned. I was very lucky. My journey only got more interesting in Park City.

Then Val retired in the spring, and with picking up the publisher’s reins a sense of the full circle began to take hold. This personal journey may be reaching completion, while of course the quest continues, always. Some things don’t end, if you are fortunate.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.