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When Teresa Stewart was laid off from The Ely Times during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, she took a job at a local clinic. She worked there five months before realizing she missed the hustle and bustle of newspaper work. But in a small town, there aren’t many options for someone who loves ink and newsprint, so she started her own paper.
“It’s just a little local paper, and I publish local news – not anything you can Google or find online,” she said.
Stewart published her first issue of the Bristlecone Tribune on June 4, 2021, and in eight months has attracted over 100 subscribers, who pay $50 for home delivery or $70 to receive each issue via the mail. The newsstand price is 75 cents.
When Stewart made her decision to jump back into newspapers and start her own, the first thing she did was craft a business plan. She comes from the advertising side and understands the marketplace in her community.
“I wasn’t coming into the business blind, thinking I was going to make a ton of money and start hiring people from the beginning,” she said. “After working at the other newspaper so long, I knew how much money I could bring in, and researched expenses such as production costs.”
Like many start-ups, the Bristlecone Tribune was a kitchen-table publication at first, made easier with technology enabling fledgling publishers to build their products on home computers. She got a small loan and after a few months, rented an office in Ely.
Stewart is largely a one-woman band. She contracts with a local woman to help deliver papers and she pays a few freelance writers to help her cover the news. She uses an outside bookkeeping company to help her with payables and receivables.
“I’ve had to write a few stories since I started the newspaper, but I’d much rather sell ads and do the graphic design,” she said. “I stay so busy trying to do it all, but I don’t want to get in over my head by hiring someone else right now. I want to keep it small until I get it built up.”
For the first few months, Stewart didn’t even pay herself a salary, and got by on savings and pandemic relief funding. Step by step she’s getting on her feet and now is able to draw a salary.
Special sections have been Stewart’s bread and butter. “They are really popular with both readers and advertisers,” she said.
“I started with a graduation section and that was very successful, and then I moved on to a 4th of July section,” she said.
In Ely, the high school holds an all-class reunion over the July 4th holiday. It is a time when everyone who ever graduated is invited to return. Last July, Stewart published a special section featuring old yearbook photos and July 4th ads. A historic train that converts to a Christmas train during the holiday season is the perfect setting for a special section featuring holiday songs for kids to sing on the train.
The newspaper’s name holds a sentimental meaning. Nevada’s Great Basin National Park is home to the ancient Bristlecone Pine, trees so hardy, they thrive in climates where no other vegetation can survive. Stewart thought Bristlecone Tribune had a poetic quality and she had a piece of art perfect to complete the newspaper’s flag.
“Our logo is a tree that my mom drew a few years ago that looks like a bristlecone pine up in the mountains,” Stewart said. “She passed away back in 2016, and when I decided to do this paper, my sister and I thought it would be cool to have one of her trees as the logo.”
For now, the Bristlecone Tribune is a print-only newspaper. Stewart maintains a Facebook page that publishes mostly obituaries, and she is at work on a plan to develop a website in the future.
So far, Stewart’s rewards have been many. The positive feedback has kept her bolstered during hard economic times.
“This is a small community, very tight-knit and the people here are amazing and supportive,” she said. “And I wouldn’t even have been able to do this if it wasn’t for the support of my advertisers and subscribers.”