• by Ray Schultz , December 29, 2024

The Flagler News, a weekly newspaper that has served Eastern Colorado for 113 years, has closed following the loss of two of its largest advertisers. 

Stop and shop Grocery informed the paper that it was discontinuing its nearly full-page advertisements in favor of its app, and Rural American Reality has discontinued ads in the Flagler News and the related Shopper following its sale. 

“I knew this day would come,” Tom Bredehoft, owner and publisher of The Flagler News, said last week, according to the paper. “I was hoping it would be later on, but it is what it is. Times are changing and the newspaper industry is not the wave of the future.”

Recently, Bredehoft saved The Burlington Record from closure. He may move the Shopper to Burlington.

‘I truly wish that I could save this paper as I did the Burlington Record, but the Flagler News never really was a profitable business. As I have said hundreds of times, the shopper was the life blood and the News was just my hobby. Now it’s a hobby I can’t afford to continue.”