Don’t hate me, but for some reason, I can’t shake a certain well-coifed blue pantsuited New York crooner from my internal looping mechanism. As much as I wish I could say it’s Neil Diamond, it might be worse. Yes, I am talking King of the Copa and the very best hair helmet in the biz: Barry Manilow.

See, it may have slipped under the radar, but as soon as the pro cyclists rolled out of town, the Telegraph rolled over into the double-digits.
That’s right – on Aug. 22, yours truly turned the big 1-0, making it the unofficial oldest weekly newspaper in Durango. And for a town that has seen a raftload of publications come and go, I can’t help but think of the venerable words of the songmeister himself, “Looks like we made it.”

 

(Hey, at least it wasn’t “We Built This City.”)

 

See, ever since Will Sands and I got the wild hair/misguided delusion to start our own paper, we were met with more than a few who were unenthused. Some simply kept quiet, others raised a cynical eyebrow, and still others came right out and said it to our faces (in between fits of laughter): “You can’t just start a newspaper!”

 

Even Will’s buddies from the Crested Butte News promptly faxed us a three-paneled cartoon rendition of “Life in News,” which started with a happy go-lucky journalist and devolved into a drunken, vomitous puddle.

 

Fortunately, we ignored the warnings. Besides, I was never one to heed advice, probably starting back when I listened to that first Barry Manilow record. Let’s face it, I am still trying to live down the karaoke machine at the office Christmas party as well as this year’s ill-fated piñata massacre.
But if there’s one thing I like to do, it’s proving people wrong. Just ask my husband, or all those people back in college who said it was impossible to go through four years at CU Boulder without puking. (I still think there should be an award for that.)

 

Nevertheless, the odds on the Telegraph reaching pretweendom, let alone its first birthday, were long, even for someone who spent 32 straight hours chained to her desk birthing the first issue. To this day, I am extremely incredulous, shocked and even a little skeptical to think it’s been a decade – a veritable eternity in newspaper years.

 

Anyway, like any eternity, details are hazy. I tried to look at back issues to jog the gray matter, but apparently archiving wasn’t a big priority in those early days (nor was spellchecking, for that matter.) Sure, there were some rough spots. Like the day a biker rally organizer stormed in and threatened to take off Wills head or the time we took it a little too far and came to the painful realization that 1) not everyone enjoys our brand of humor, and 2) just because you black someone’s eyes out in the “Fashion Police” doesn’t mean everyone in town doesn’t know who it is. And as much as those little “teaching moments” sucked, there was a small sliver of hope: hey, at least people were reading.

 

Of course, before any of this happened, we needed to put something in print, and getting people to advertise on those yet-to-exist pages was a tough sell. Probably right up there with timeshares on Mars. Needless to say, finding the right person for the job was also an endeavor, and for a while, we were burning through sales candidates faster than Spinal Tap drummers.

 

As luck would have it, Durango is full of brave, adventurous women and eventually, we were able to land two – Jen Reeder and Lainie Maxson – who were willing to hit the streets with nothing but vague promises, laser jet business cards and a convincing smile. They held their heads high and kept a straight face, even when explaining it was the “Durango Telegraph,” not the “Durango Dog Raft,” and that while, yes, our logo does resemble a cross, we most definitely were not religiously affiliated. (It’s actually homage to our favorite trail.)

 

We soon learned not everyone subscribed to the half-empty, half-baked philosophy. In fact, there were even a few who thought a new paper in town was a pretty darned good idea. In fact, before our debut issue hit the press, we had our first real advertiser, another stalwart defender of free speech, Peter Schertz of Maria’s Bookshop.

 

There were others soon to follow, like Cathy Wakeman of Animas Trading Co., Andy and Abby Snow from Nini’s, Art Chase at Bank of the San Juans and Gunnar Conrad, who offered his photographic expertise gratis (OK, there may have been groveling involved.)

 

What they saw in us, we’ll never know. And if it was just good old-fashioned pity, we’ll take it. Regardless, after those first few shaky months, our intended weekly “snapshot of life in Durango” came into focus.

 

One by one, people started to get it – that a free newspaper isn’t necessarily free. And as much as we wish we could have paid our bill with words, it took advertisers, from mom-and-pops to kindly corporate giants, to pay the print bill, keep the computers on and talk us down from the ledge.

 

And somewhere along the line, an even more miraculous thing happened (other than taking home our first paycheck). The Telegraph went from being “our” paper to being “your” paper. We were no longer writing for ourselves, but for an entire community. A community that let us know when we were good, bad, right or wrong – and sometimes all of the above. A community that was mirrored week to week in our pages, from the long-forgotten battles over Starbucks, River Trails Ranch and Desert Rock, to the ongoing wars over Wolf Creek, plastic bags and sharing the road. And yes, along the way, I suppose there were some references to bikes, bluegrass and beer.

 

While I like to think we’ve come a long way from those early days and some of my more “adventurous” designs (I’m blaming it on sleep deprivation), I am also humored to find the more things change, the more they stay the same. Like waiting on that new whitewater park or Target to arrive, or finding an intern who can actually organize the archives. And no matter how bastardized the English language gets, I will never give up my personal jihad on random capitalization, single quotation marks and exclamation abuse!!

 

And last but not least, let us not forget those we lost along the way (look for flashback ads from businesses who are no longer with us as well as a few blasts from the past we couldn’t resist.) Then, there were others who moved on, either physically, like former photographer Todd Newcomer (Fort Collins); karmically, like writer Mike Sheahan (Eugene, Ore.); spiritually, like longtime delivery driver Oden Cohen (the great beyond); and figuratively, like Will Sands (retired from pencil pushing.)

 

As for the rest of you who have made it this far and are still reading, even after all these years, a thanks bigger than the San Juans themselves. And don’t worry, I’ll spare you any more Barry – after all, we’ve only just begun.

– Missy Votel