Clausen's I-70 Scout a community publishing success story

After a week on a trip listening to Doug Claussen vent about the frustrations of getting employees to use spelling software, his brother doctored this photo of Claussen with an unhappy cat and gave him the image for his 40th birthday.

Doug Claussen ('93 12MA) went back to where he started and ended up a newspaper owner.

Claussen founded and publishes The I-70 Scout, a weekly distributed in the communities of Watkins, Bennett, Strasburg, Byers, Deer Trail and Agate.

"I believe the earliest roots of my community journalism experience would be my upbringing in Iowa, where community newspapers are the norm," he said. "Later, as a CU graduate student, I did a study on Life On Capitol Hill as an urban community newspaper. This paper, where I later published my first articles, serves the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Denver, where I lived for six years, including my time at CU."

His first taste of small-town journalism, however, was bitter. He took a job at the Eastern Colorado News, which covered the same communities his paper now serves. He said he was treated so badly by his employer that he quit after just six months to take a copy-editing job with The Greeley Tribune.

But as metropolitan Denver continued to grow near the rural communities he once covered, so did Claussen's interest in returning there.

"I viewed this area as potentially rich due to the impending opening of DIA (Denver International Airport), which was sure to make these small towns grow," he said.

"I read a book on how to start a community newspaper and began to calculate costs. In August 1994, I was laid off my job at the Tribune, which caused me to redouble my efforts, and, in September 1994, a local truck stop owner, Hank Breeden, loaned me a small amount of money to purchase a computer and get The I-70 Scout started. The first publication was dated Oct. 19, 1994."

The Scout was supported by three local grocery stores in the form of inserts and bulk-mailed to the six communities it serves.

"It took off like a bat out of hell," Claussen said. "It has dominated my life and the local media scene ever since. The bulk-mail approach obliterated the (Eastern Colorado News), and in January 1996, that paper was sold." In June 1998 Claussen purchased the Eastern Colorado News building, which housed that newspaper for its 86-year history.

In January 1999, his business was incorporated as the I-70 Publishing Company Inc., and, in September 2000, Claussen launched www.i-70scout.com.

"When the ECN came up for sale last year, I negotiated with its publisher, who is a nice man and by now was a friend of mine, and bought it for a tap dance," he said.

"I've turned the ECN into a Friday paper for sports coverage of our five high schools. We also put ag, national and international AP news to give it an identity of its own separate from the Scout, and we have ambitions to grow it into a paper of interest to a larger area of rural eastern Colorado in order to build a wider subscription base than just the six towns served by the Scout."

He said it's still hard to get used to the confrontational situations that go along with ownership, but his small newspaper provides adequate rewards, financial and otherwise.

"I am still a writer at heart — there's something about it that soothes the soul. Unfortunately, the demands of running a burgeoning business often interfere with this process. I enjoy page layout and am quite fussy about the paper's appearance as well as its editorial substance. I enjoy publishing thorough stories, even if their length bucks modern trends toward short articles."

Claussen said Sue O'Brien – then associate dean of the school, now editorial page editor of The Denver Post and also a native Iowan – especially nurtured his interest in journalism.

"I got to know her a little better than some teachers because she lived in the same Denver neighborhood, so we sometimes shared rides to Boulder. I also fondly remember the assistance of the late Bill McReynolds and of Pat Raybon, who chaired my professional project committee."

dclaussen@i-70scout.com