OHIO NEWS:Colorado newspapers taken after publishing a report on alleged rape

OHIO NEWS: Colorado newspapers taken after publishing a report on alleged rape

Supporters had given the publication almost $2,000 by Thursday night when someone returned a trash bag full of papers.

Patrons had given the newspaper almost $2,000 in donations.
Colorado newspapers taken after publishing a report on alleged rape
Mike Wiggins/Ouray County Plaindealer photo
Through Scripps News, via APPublished on January 20, 2024, at 1:27 PM; modified on January 20, 2024, at 7:27 PM
The owner and publisher of a small-town Colorado newspaper said on Friday that almost all of the copies were taken from newspaper racks on the same day that the Ouray County Plaindealer published an article about charges being brought over rapes that were allegedly committed during an underage drinking party at the police chief’s house while the chief was asleep.

“If you hoped to silence or intimidate us, you failed miserably,” Mike Wiggins wrote on X, the previous Twitter platform, on Thursday, vowing to investigate the matter further. We’ll track down the perpetrator. And there will soon be another press run.”

In order to inform the public about the felony sexual assault charges brought against three men—including the chief of police’s relative—for alleged acts at a party in Ouray in May 2023 that involved the use of drugs and alcohol, the newspaper shared the story on social media and lifted the paywall on its website. The victim who reported the rapes was 17, according to the documents, and the suspects were 17, 18, and 19 at the time.

Someone had returned a trash bag full of newspapers to the Plaindealer by Thursday night, and fans had given the publication around $2,000—an act that Wiggins described as “extremely heartening and humbling.”

In Ouray County, a hilly region in southwest Colorado with 5,000 residents, around 250 newspapers occupied the racks on Friday morning.

“If somebody was going to try to make it so the public couldn’t read this story, we were going to make sure to counteract that,” Wiggins said.

Delivery of the Ouray County Plaindealer to racks occurs late Wednesday and publication occurs on Thursdays. The paper arrives in the mail for subscribers.

According to Wiggins, someone had to spend $12 opening racks and taking out all the newspapers since the weekly newspaper only costs $1 on the rack. A coffee shop’s newspaper rack was one they missed, resulting in the theft of around 200 papers. The fact that the racks themselves were undamaged relieved Wiggins.

He thought that only one person was engaged in the crime and that the guy who returned the newspapers was the one who had taken them. Wiggins reported the information to the police even though he refused to identify the individual. According to Wiggins, the officers had surveillance footage of a few of the thefts.

The Associated Press called Ouray Police Chief Jeff Wood on Friday, but he did not answer their call.

The newspaper will include the theft of the papers in its article that will appear on Thursday, according to Wiggins. They may also write a piece elucidating their reasoning for taking the incident so seriously and reprinting the paper.

Wiggins said, “Writing about ourselves is strange.” “We work very hard to make sure we are not the story.”

For over five years, Mike Wiggins and his spouse, Erin McIntyre, have been the paper’s owners and publishers. The only other occasion they experienced anything like was around three years before, when McIntyre wrote about a nearby campsite that was disobeying hotel regulations imposed because to the COVID-19 outbreak. He stated someone had covered the plexiglass window with a message ordering them to remove the newspaper rack at the campsite and taped over the coin slot.