Eagle County names Vail Daily as newspaper of record
'It’s the number one paper in our area' says county communications director
Vail Daily archive
Eagle County has a new newspaper of record: the Vail Daily.
Colorado law requires each county to designate a “newspaper of record” in which it publishes official notices for items such as public hearings, proposed ordinances, financial reports, and election notices.
According to the law, the paper must have general circulation in the county and be published daily, triweekly, semiweekly or weekly. A daily newspaper must have been published continuously for at least six months prior to publishing its first official county legal notice.
The Vail Daily, which has been publishing since June 15, 1981, and has distribution throughout the Eagle River Valley, meets these criteria for Eagle County.
Justin Patrick, the county’s strategic communications director, presented the recommendation to the Eagle County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday morning, which approved it unanimously.
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“We have been in the process of finding a new newspaper of record for Eagle County due to the closure of the Eagle Valley Enterprise, which was our newspaper of record for many, many years,” Patrick said.
The Eagle Valley Enterprise was published weekly in Eagle County for 124 years, until December 2024, when it published its final issue. For the last several years, the Vail Daily replicated the legal notices published in the Eagle Valley Enterprise.
In February, the commissioners adopted a resolution declaring the Aspen Daily News the county’s paper of record. Wednesday’s vote overrode this decision.
Later in the year, county staff formed a committee, put out a request for proposal for a newspaper of record and recommended the commissioners select the Vail Daily.
“It’s the number one paper in our area that covers all of what we do and probably gets the maximum amount of eyeballs for all of the legal noticing that we do, which is actually quite a lot,” Patrick said.
According to Patrick, the county posts “close to $100,000 a year of legal noticing.”
Vail Daily Publisher Bob Brown said he was “really pleased and proud” that the paper was selected as the county’s newspaper of record.
“Certainly, we’ve had a strong partnership in this community, and the paper is, as Justin noted, highly visible and read,” Brown said. “We studied it every other year and we’re in the 90th percentile of readership, which is getting you a good bang for your buck when we’re trying to make the community aware.”
