By Bear Howard and Associates —
The Red Rock News sale connects more of the region’s newspapers through shared ownership—and puts the future of local coverage in focus.
By Bear Howard and Associates,
Sedona, AZ — When Sedona residents open their local newspaper, they want to know what is happening in the place they call home. What is the city planning? What will a development mean for their neighborhood? How are the schools doing? Why is a public project costing more than expected? Who is making decisions, and whose concerns are being heard?
They also want to see the community itself: the student who accomplished something, the neighbor who died, the volunteers who keep an organization going, the business opening its doors.
Those expectations give local meaning to the announced sale of the Sedona Red Rock News. The question reaches beyond whose name appears on the ownership documents. It concerns the people who will show up, ask questions, explain decisions and maintain a public record of life in Sedona and the Verde Valley.
Will experienced reporters remain accessible? Will the Village of Oak Creek and smaller communities receive consistent attention? Will coverage follow a complicated issue long enough to explain what actually happened? Will readers encounter different perspectives, clearly identified opinion and straightforward corrections when something is wrong?
The answers will emerge through the newspaper’s work after the transition. For now, Sedona is witnessing a change in an institution that has helped shape the community’s understanding of itself for more than six decades.
On October 5, the Larson family announced the sale of Larson Newspapers, publishers of the Sedona Red Rock News and The Journal, to Wick Communications. The transaction is scheduled to close December 1, 2026. Kyle Larson will remain to help lead the transition, and the announcement says advertising schedules, print deliveries and digital subscriptions will continue without interruption during that period.
For generations, residents have relied on the Red Rock News, argued with it, advertised in it and written letters to its editor. They have saved its photographs and disputed its headlines. Agreement with the newspaper has never been a requirement for recognizing its place in Sedona’s civic life.
Family ownership gave that relationship a recognizable center. The Larson name was attached to the enterprise, its decisions and its history. Under the announced arrangement, the newspaper will enter a larger organization whose responsibilities extend across many communities.
Wick is also a family-owned company. Founded in 1926 and headquartered in Sierra Vista, it brings a century of publishing history. Its announcement promises investment in digital tools, expanded coverage and advertising services. For Sedona, those commitments create possibilities that will become meaningful as they translate into reporting and service to readers.
The sale is also part of a larger regional change occurring almost simultaneously.
On December 1, the Verde Independent, Camp Verde Bugle, Williams–Grand Canyon News and Navajo-Hopi Observer are scheduled to transfer from full ownership by Western News&Info into River City Newspapers. River City is owned equally by Wick and Western, which belongs to the Soldwedel family. The two companies have been partners in that venture since 1995. Western describes the move as a way to strengthen operations, provide a predictable succession plan and retain an ownership interest.
For readers in the Verde Valley, the implication is significant. Several familiar publications will have overlapping ownership interests. Different newspaper names may remain, along with different editors and community identities, while the business interests behind them become more closely connected.
Shared ownership does not automatically produce identical journalism. Editors can retain considerable independence within a publishing group. But residents should understand the distinction between having several publications and having several entirely separate owners making decisions about investment, staffing and priorities.
It would be inaccurate to describe Wick and Western as owning nearly every Arizona newspaper outside the major metropolitan papers. Other publishers, including Independent Newsmedia and Times Media Group, have substantial operations, and individual independent publications remain. Nevertheless, Wick and Western occupy an extensive portion of Arizona’s community newspaper landscape, particularly in northern and rural communities.
The regional model has been developing for years.
In 2022, River City acquired the Mohave Valley Daily News and several other publications from Brehm Communications. A separate transaction brought the Kingman Miner and a Golden Valley printing facility into the group. Lake Havasu City’s Today’s News-Herald and the Parker Pioneer were already part of River City.
These arrangements allow printing, technology, advertising services and management to support multiple publications. River City’s recently announced publisher, Jay Curran, oversees a group of print and digital titles across its territory. The individual newspaper remains connected to its hometown while its administration operates on a regional scale.
For a small newspaper, access to shared resources can be valuable. Maintaining subscription systems, digital publishing tools, advertising technology and production services requires money and expertise. A larger organization can spread those costs across several markets.
The same approach could strengthen reporting. Sedona’s housing challenges connect to the communities where its workers live. Transportation, tourism, water and public lands cross municipal boundaries. Reporters working together across the region could explain those connections more thoroughly than isolated newsrooms can.
Whether that happens depends on decisions about people and resources. Savings from shared administration could help sustain local reporting. Broader assignments for an already stretched staff could make it harder to cover individual communities. Both are possible within the same organizational structure.
Flagstaff’s experience offers a useful view of these competing pressures.
When Wick purchased the Arizona Daily Sun in 2023, KNAU reported that all employees had been offered jobs with the new owner. In an interview with Arizona Agenda at the time, then-CEO Francis Wick said staff had been retained at their existing pay and described plans for greater local decision-making. The interview also addressed unpaid furloughs elsewhere in the company and efforts to centralize operations.
That record illustrates the business reality. A company can invest in a newspaper while reducing expenses in other parts of its operation. A commitment to community journalism exists alongside the requirement to pay for it.
In southern Arizona, another form of evolution has been taking place. Wick described the Herald/Review in 2023 as having expanded from an audience centered on Sierra Vista and Bisbee to one spanning Cochise County. Its work included podcasts, videos, magazines, social media and other formats alongside the newspaper. That offers an example of how a familiar publication can develop into a regional news service reaching people in several ways. It does not establish that each town receives more coverage.
These developments reflect an industry undergoing a prolonged financial transformation. Northwestern University’s 2025 State of Local News report found that almost 40 percent of local American newspapers had disappeared over two decades. Recent losses included independently owned newspapers and small chains. A hometown owner faces the same basic challenge as a regional company: finding enough revenue to support the work.
For a publishing family ready to sell, an established regional buyer can provide continuity and a future for the enterprise. For the community, the value of that future will be measured in the journalism it receives.
In Sedona, that means a reporter who understands the history behind a planning dispute. It means explaining a budget in language residents can follow. It means checking an assertion before turning it into a headline, distinguishing reporting from opinion and returning to a story after the public controversy subsides.
It also means maintaining the everyday coverage that helps people recognize one another as neighbors. The civic value of a newspaper includes both investigating consequential decisions and recording ordinary community life.
Residents have a role in sustaining that work. Subscriptions and advertising help pay for reporting. Providing information, offering informed criticism and expecting corrections help establish standards. Supporting a newspaper does not require agreeing with its editorial positions, and holding it accountable does not require wishing it failure.
No announcement can tell Sedona exactly how its newspaper will evolve. The record elsewhere shows continuity, regional expansion, new digital offerings and financial pressure. It provides context, but it cannot settle the outcome here.
That outcome will become visible in familiar places: at a council meeting, in a school gymnasium, at a community event, in the questions a reporter asks and in the stories that reach readers.
For the people of Sedona and the Verde Valley, the promise of larger ownership will be fulfilled if it gives those stories more depth, more attention and a durable place in the life of the community.
This reference guide brings together the newspapers owned by Wick Communications, Western News&Info and their shared River City operation, identifying the communities they serve, available circulation figures and announced ownership changes, with links to supporting sources. Its greatest value is showing how familiar local newspapers across Sedona, the Verde Valley and neighboring communities are becoming connected through overlapping ownership—a useful foundation for following what those relationships may mean for local coverage, editorial independence and public accountability.