Robert Meyerowitz started as editor of the Park Record in October. The position had been open since previous editor Bubba Brown departed in April 2022.
Meyerowitz began his career in journalism as a foreign correspondent for AP and NPR, covering conflicts in Central America and Israel.
“I was born in Fort Bragg in North Carolina,” he said. “But in journalism — I started working as a foreign reporter for public radio actually. And then I spent a long time as a print reporter and editor in Alaska, and then stayed in the West, mostly in Montana and Colorado, and I was in Durango, Colorado before I came here.”
He said he found the Park Record job to be a unique opportunity, and the small newsroom setting appealed to him.
While the print paper has a smaller staff than in years past, Meyerowitz said he came in with tempered expectations.
“You can perennially feel that loss, especially if you’ve worked at a paper and many people have now that’s been downsized," he said. "But I came in expecting the staff to be the size that it is. My job is to preserve that size and sort of maximize what we do. And that means not doing some things that we were doing before, and being able to do other things.”
If they’re able to bring on more reporters, he said he’d like to do more coverage of local school districts and business.
“There’s a strong feeling — that I think is shared by reporters who have been here just a little while and been here a long time, and former editor or editors — that we should beef up coverage of education, coverage of business locally, with a person who’s dedicated to doing those things.”
Specifically, he said there’s a hole in coverage of local ski conglomerates.
“I feel the loss of bigger picture reporting, for example, about Vail Resort Inc. and about Alterra... It’s sort of mysterious what’s going on with the companies in a macro-sense, especially with Alterra which is privately held. But those things do affect us locally.”
Meyerowitz also said they want to continue to push out letters to the editor about local issues. He said currently popular topics include the Dakota Pacific project and pickleball.
The Park Record is owned by West Virginia based-Ogden Newspapers. The company owns media entities across the country.
In Utah along with the Park Record, they maintain ownership of the Daily Herald in Provo and the Standard-Examiner in Ogden. They also run papers in many ski towns across Colorado, including The Aspen Times, Steamboat Pilot, and the Vail Daily.
Ogden’s CEO, Robert Nutting, is also the majority owner of Major League Baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates.
Similar to other Ogden papers, the Park Record’s revenue comes from advertising and print subscriptions.
Park Record Publisher Valerie Spung said there are no plans to eradicate the print edition.
