Enterprising documentarians take note: the Wasatch Wave/Summit County News newspaper is for sale.
A notice soliciting buyers has appeared in recent issues of the Wasatch Wave, a weekly paper that began publishing in Heber City in 1889 and is the oldest business operating in Wasatch County.
As for the price, “everything is negotiable,” Co-Publisher and General Manager Paul McFee said, while declining to list a hard number.
The company has been in talks with a couple of interested buyers, including a newspaper in Salt Lake, but “nothing is signed,” McFee said.
A combination of Heber City’s downtown revitalization project along 100 W and generational change contributed toward the decision to sell.
“That corridor runs straight through our newspaper press room,” said Co-Publisher and Managing Editor Laurie Buys-Wynn. “I don’t have any children who want to take on the newspaper. Our business partners do not have any kids who want to take it on, so after a 50-year career, I am ready to retire.”
They said the weekly that sells for a dollar in newsstands has a circulation of 4,500 and includes the formerly free-standing Summit County News, which was distributed primarily on the East Side until about a year ago. The copying and publishing services under the Wave Publishing banner are also for sale.
Buys-Wynn first found herself working for the newspaper on Jan. 1, 1974, at age 7. She became a printer’s devil after her parents, Dick and Sue Buys, purchased the Wasatch Wave along with The Park Record, the Summit County Bee and the Payson Chronicle.
They owned The Park Record for nearly a decade before selling it in 1983 while continuing to run the Wasatch Wave and the Wasatch Publishing copy and print business.
Buys-Wynn and her sister Kari McFee, along with McFee’s husband, Paul, eventually took the newspaper’s helm as co-publishers.
“Being the paper of record for Wasatch County, we are the heartbeat of the community and have been for 136 years,” Buys-Wynn said. “With the growth that the Wasatch Back and Wasatch County see, this can only get bigger and better as more people move into our valley and the changing dynamics of our community create an attractive piece to maintain the flavor and the heartbeat of the community.”
She said she’d love to see the Wasatch Wave merge again with The Park Record, purchased in 2023 by Park City residents Matthew and Tatiana Prince. Matthew Prince is the cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare, an international internet services company.
“In my head, having a regional publication that covers the entire Wasatch Back would be really beneficial to both publications if we joined forces,” Buys-Wynn said. “Through the Summit County News, we receive the majority of the legal publications for Summit County and all of the legal publications for Wasatch County. We thought it would be a great opportunity for the owners of the Park Record to increase some of their circulation numbers and be able to pull in more revenue through circulation and legal notices.”
Park Record Editor and Publisher Don Rogers said he could understand their thinking.
“This is a decision for the owners and how deeply they want to get into the newspaper business,” he said. “They bought The Park Record as the best, most effective way they could think of to contribute to this community. Matthew’s family has been a part of Park City for generations, and where he and Tatiana want to raise their family. It wasn’t a business decision.”
Rogers said The Park Record has expanded coverage into Wasatch County as the Wasatch Back communities grow closer, in part as Deer Valley Resort’s East Village portal comes on line near Heber City.
“We’re definitely watching and thinking about our longer-term coverage plans,” Rogers said. “The Wave and The Record have evolved into much different papers over time, and The Record is also on a path toward becoming a nonprofit. To whatever degree that plays into our futures, we’ll see.”
The Wasatch Wave is one of the rare newspapers today printed on its own seven-unit, full-color press. The costs of removal and reinstallation elsewhere would likely be cost-prohibitive, Buys-Wynn said.
“Either a digital format operation where they may strictly be an online publication, or roll the circulation and some of the news into an existing publication and be printed elsewhere” are two more likely purchaser courses Buys-Wynn anticipates as the publishers weigh their offers.