Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Reporter Resurrects Career - Buys His Own Paper - NYTimes.com:

Eight months ago, Mr. Sprengelmeyer, 42, worked as the sole Washington correspondent for The Rocky Mountain News, the Denver newspaper that went out of business in February, but his job these days is a far cry from the Senate press gallery.

In August, he embarked on a new life in this isolated little town as owner, publisher, editor, primary writer and sometime ad salesman, photographer and deliverer of the weekly Guadalupe County Communicator, circulation about 2,000.

“I covered the war in Iraq and the presidential campaign, and I knew I was never going to top that, even if I found another reporting job,” he said, sitting on a battered chair in his single-story storefront space. “I just wanted a completely new direction.”

Of the thousands of paths taken by journalists who have been cast off by shrinking metropolitan newspapers, Mr. Sprengelmeyer’s is one of the more unusual, and one of the more hopeful. While bringing some big-city professionalism to a distinctly small-time operation, he says he is making enough money to support himself, and he has been able to assign some freelance work to a few underemployed former colleagues.