The Plainsman Herald nearly folded. The 137-year-old weekly newspaper in Springfield, Colorado, had documented rural life in the southeastern corner of the state for decades — from the annual Baca County fair to school board meetings and city councils. But printing, delivery and insurance costs had gone up. Advertisers fell away. And in July, owner Kent Brooks announced that the paper would cease printing by the end of this year and could shut down entirely soon after that. Then Brooks’s phone began ringing, and his inbox overflowed: Readers were stepping up to save the only news source across the county’s six towns.
