In a letter to its readers published Thursday, Publisher and Press Officer of The Moab Times-Independent, Zane Taylor said the move was important for the paper to evolve so it remains essential to all Moabites.
The first edition of the newspaper was published in 1896 under the name of the Grand Valley Times. Taylor’s grandfather acquired the paper in the early 1900s and a merger with the Moab Independent created the current name.
The paper was operated for years by Sam Taylor, Zane’s father. His mother, Adrien served as co-publisher and editor. His sister, Sena Taylor Hauer was a reporter for the Park Record for seven years and served as editor for three in the 1980s and '90s.
In 1997, Hauer moved back to Moab to help her folks run the paper, eventually becoming its editor.
“I was having my second child and needed a little bit of a gap and had always wanted to come home to Moab,” Hauer said. “My dream when I went to journalism school at University of Utah in 1981, was to be like my grandfather. And luckily, I never was. I never had to work that hard. I always wanted to go home and work with the paper and I came home, worked at the paper for a number of years with my family and enjoyed it.”
With two young children and a change of marriage, she stepped away from the paper, but continued to write a weekly column. Doug McMurdo was hired as editor. He will continue in that role now that the paper has been acquired by the Tribune.
After four generations of the Taylor family working there, Hauer is thrilled by the Tribune’s “adoption.” With more papers going digital, she says they really didn’t have much to sell, so she says the family donated the paper to the Tribune, a nonprofit organization.
“We were heartbroken to think that we aren't going to be able to keep putting out the paper and keeping a watchdog on this community in this region of southeastern Utah, four corners, Bears Ears, public lands, Colorado River, the overwhelming things that are happening here,” she said. “We're a global hotspot and feeling the pressure to keep doing that has been entirely overwhelming the last few years. Luckily, ad revenue has kept up and it’s been a viable paper and a popular one. But the question was, did we as a family have the gas to keep it going.”
The paper, Hauer says, has kept the pulse of all that’s happened in southeastern Utah and helped keep people honest.
“It's been a spicy dicey history here,” she said. “You look back to the pioneers that came into our community. They didn't arrive the same time as the southwestern side of the state did. This was more of a rough and tumble area. The first Mormon missions that came to Utah got turned away by Native Americans. And some people were killed, and the Mormons retreated. And it was decades later that this side of the state got colonized by Anglos. And then the issues continued on: how do you cross the Colorado River? Well, my great grandfather would run the ferry. How do you grow the crops? And then we segued into the whole uranium radioactivity saga that occurred.”
And the issues continued. After the uranium mill closed, there’s been a big excavation to clean up the radioactivity along the banks of the Colorado River, and as Moab’s slickrock was discovered, they’ve had to deal with what she called “industrial tourism.”
“It’s just very important that the story is told about what's happening, that have broad ripple effects for people around the world.”
The family will continue to own the building in the heart of downtown at Main and Center Streets which the Tribune will continue to use as its offices for the next year.
In a statement, the Tribune’s Executive Editor Lauren Gustus said the Times-Independent is a good fit to transition to nonprofit status because it’s sustainable, profitable and doing the essential reporting the community appreciates.
As the paper moves to nonprofit status, circulation will increase as every resident in Moab will receive the paper free, once a week by mail. Stories on the website will also be free to all, without a subscription.
