Weekly paper serving community devastated by Colorado's largest fire keeps on publishing, for now

"Nothing stops the Black Forest News," not even a Colorado-record forest fire that burned the editor's home and those of hundreds of her neighbors, reports Jesse Paul of the Colorado Springs Gazette.

"Three days after she lost everything, Judy von Ahlefeldt's newspaper rolled off the presses like it has for the last 53 years," Paul writes. "Gone was her home of 43 years, her beloved mustang, Monty, and years of research on Black Forest. . . . Von Ahlefeldt, 70, knows everything about Black Forest."

Much of that is in her newspaper archives, so when she got an early warning and saw that the fire might reach her, she gathered them up "instead of family photos, a work-in-progress dissertation on the Palmer Divide or countless irreplaceable possessions," Paul reports. "They can't be replaced, but everybody that lost a house lost those things," she told him.

"Von Ahlefeldt is the owner, publisher, reporter, designer, editor, advertising representative, and photographer . . . a community-based, one-woman news organization, informing a few hundred readers each week on the happenings of the forest," Paul writes. She has lived there since 1970 and owned the weekly paper since 1997, and wonders if the fire, which made the paper two days late, is the beginning of the end. ""For the time being, I'm going to keep it going," she told Paul. "I don't know for sure what's going to happen. I don't want to see the paper go, but there are things I need time for." (Read more)