Face The State Staff Report
The Vail Trail, a weekly publication produced by the Vail Daily, ceased operations today after publishing continuously since 1965. The decision by Swift Communications, parent company to the Daily and Trail, means today's edition will be the the paper's last.
According to Nathan Rodriguez, a staff writer for the Trail, staff were told about the decision today but a recent slashing of the paper's page count had already raised suspicions over the business' future.
"A few weeks back we made the decision to cut from 40 pages down to about 24, so that was what it was, but at the same time it made you wonder if this was going to be sustainable for that long, or not," he said. "That was our early indication, if there was one."
The Vail Trail and the Daily became competitive rivals after the latter launched in 1981. In 2004, the Daily claimed victory when Swift scooped up the Trail, for a time operating two relatively separate organizations. The papers combined under a single management structure less than two years ago.
Vail Daily editor Don Rogers published a note on the Trail's web site late Wednesday afternoon, blaming economic conditions for the decision. "Market forces that brought on a long decline for the Trail as a rival to the Daily continued after the purchase," he said.
"Some employees would have seen that this was coming," said Rodriguez. He plans to stay on with the Daily for now, continuing some of the Trail's more popular features in the pages of its onetime rival.
Calls and e-mail to the Trail's managing editor Matt Zalaznick went unreturned by press time.