It’s staggering how much difference a year makes. It’s been almost a year since the Pikes Peak Bulletin was brought under the umbrella of Sixty35 and most of the content was shifted online.
In today’s world, it made sense. After all, most news is consumed on some kind of digital device and it seemed to be a logical move.
But Manitou is weird. It’s one of the things we love about our home, right?
In some ways I wish we would be a little less weird and more in line with what I believe is more conventional thinking (different column for a different time).
Manitou being weird will always help the Bulletin thrive as a weekly publication. For a lot of reasons, people here love holding a newspaper or magazine and getting their information that way.
And at times, I believe my sports coverage is out of place in these pages. But I’m surprisingly proven wrong by locals I wouldn’t immediately identify as sports fans.
I’ll interact with people who bounce into the Keg Lounge (where I stop in socially and still contribute part-time work behind the scenes) and ask me about the upcoming basketball season. Or remark on the good year that the cross-country runners had. Football, volleyball, baseball, soccer, etc.
The people are paying attention.
I would love to take the credit for it, but the reality is that I need to credit Lyn Ettinger-Harwell and Rhonda Van Pelt.
They, perhaps more than anyone, understood the need for the Bulletin to rise from the ashes. And it needed to be in its weekly published hard-copy form and not folded into some online conglomerate pretending to be what the CS Indy used to be.
It’s been heartbreaking to see how difficult it has been for the Indy to survive and the news of its probable demise sucks.
People here love holding a newspaper.
But the Indy’s fate serves as a strong reminder that community matters and the Bulletin’s strength resides in that sentiment.
This is supposed to be the sports page, and have barely mentioned sports. But now, writing for 2023’s final issue, I’m reminded that the whole of the Bulletin is stronger than its individual parts.
I love that the locals with no ties to the high school teams will ask me about those kids. Even if they don’t invest their time or money to watch the games, they care. I get so worked up at times that games aren’t well-attended that I admittedly can’t see the forest through the trees.
This community cares about the community.
Thanks for that. Thanks for allowing us to be in these pages and telling the stories about our town that need to be told.
We have momentum going into 2024 and we plan on riding that wave.
Game on.