Welcome to Thursday

If you received your newspaper on a Thursday, there’s no need to worry. The mail wasn’t late this week.

Instead, this week marks the Saratoga Sun’s return to Thursday publication. We have switched to a new printer, one in eastern Wyoming, in our continued efforts to provide you with the best product we can each week.

When we use the term return in regards to Thursday publication, it may be confusing to some of our readers. It may seem to some that the Sun has published on Wednesday forever. Long-time Saratoga locals, however, can tell you differently. Since our editor has lived in Saratoga for only two decades, and is under the age of 40, they took a quick dive through the archives to see when it was the Saratoga Sun switched to Wednesdays.

The answer may shock you.

Out of the 135 years the Sun has been publishing, only 36 years of those have been on Wednesday. In the 1920s, the Sun was published on Thursday. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s the Sun was published on Thursday. It wasn’t until February 12, 1986 the Saratoga Sun moved to a Wednesday publication. Things were a little different back then, but not by much. In an editorial in that week’s paper, improved coverage of local news and high school sports was cited.

Back then, the Saratoga Town Council met on Monday. It wasn’t until the early 90s when Saratoga’s governing body met on Tuesday. 

Our hope, as well, is we can utilize this Thursday publication to better serve our readers. With the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees meeting on Monday and the Board of Carbon County Commissioners and the Saratoga Town Council meeting on Tuesday, our goal is to provide some timely articles the week of those meetings while still providing additional content the week after.

We also hope this will help our sports coverage, though high school sports are winding down as we enter track and field. In the past few years, it hasn’t been lost on us that while we were using Monday to wrap up our week and get our newspaper out, others were just getting started on Monday. With just a little more time, our hope is we can continue to improve on our coverage of high school sports.

As we’ve talked to our readers at community events about these challenges, some have joked we should dust off the old printing press which currently resides in the Battle Miner building at the Grand Encampment Museum. We’d like to think that time won’t ever come, but learning how to set type may reduce the number of typos the editor makes.

Finally, we hope this change will be beneficial for our readers and our advertisers. As we get used to this new publication schedule and this new learning curve, please bear with us. We, as always, appreciate your patience and your support.