Colorado weekly paper to shut for indefinite period

The following excerpt was sent out from The Colorado Sun:

A weekly alternative newspaper in Colorado Springs is suspending publication and “going dark” amid overwhelming debt, with the hope that it may return in February.

The final issue of the Colorado Springs Independent, known to readers as “The Indy,” will be published Dec. 27, putting an indefinite pause to the weekly that served the state’s second-largest city as an alternative to the city’s daily newspaper for more than three decades.

“That’s our hope, because that’s all it can be is a hope right now,” Fran Zankowski, the paper’s publisher, told The Colorado Sun on Tuesday. “What happened is, we do not have enough money to pay the staff in January.”

The entire 14-person staff will be laid off and their final day of work will be Dec. 29, Zankowski said.

Editions of The Indy hit newsstands every Wednesday, providing investigative journalism, restaurant reviews, entertainment news and a popular elections guide.

Zankowski announced the difficult decision in the Indy’s Dec. 20 edition, explaining to readers that the paper was unable to recover from nearly $400,000 debt accrued after a rebranding effort in March. That month, a round of layoffs slashed the staff in half, he said, and three more people have been laid off since then.

Zankowski, who has held publisher roles at alternative weeklies across the country for 30 years, was hired in May to help alleviate the financial turmoil.

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