Steve and Dawn Mathis have
sold The Lincoln County News to Brett Wesner, they announced last Thursday. The
Mathises have been operating the newspaper for 30 years.
Wesner is a veteran Oklahoma
newspaper publisher. Through his Cordell-based company, he publishes 12
additional papers, seven of them in Oklahoma.
“It was a tough decision, but
one we felt we had to make,” Steve Mathis said of the sale. “I had always been
told that a person will know when it is time to let go of a businesses and over
the last three or so years we came to the realization it was time to move on.”
Steve Mathis, who graduated
from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in journalism in 1984, served as
a restaurant manager for five years after college to support his family before
getting hired to run The Lincoln County News.
“It was always a dream of
mine to work at a newspaper because that is what I went to school for. But
after graduation I discovered that jobs in journalism were tough to come by,”
he said. “I was working as a restaurant manager when I was hired by veteran
journalists Randel Grigsby (deceased) and Jim Mayo – who at that time owned The
Lincoln County News. They hired me to run the paper based on my degree and
management experience, so I not only got that journalism opportunity I was
looking for but also got to manage the business as publisher. That role
eventually led to Dawn and I buying out the two partners 10 years later.”
Steve and Dawn moved to
Chandler in 1989, along with their two young children. The couple basically
raised their family in the confines of The Lincoln County News office.
“We actually set up a play
room in the back of the building in what is the office’s library,” Dawn Mathis
said. “We brought in toys, diapers, snacks, formula – whatever we needed – so
that we could keep an eye on both our children and our paper simultaneously.
Once our children started school we would pick them up everyday and bring them
back to the paper until we felt they were old enough to stay at home by
themselves.”
In 1999, Steve and Dawn
purchased the remaining shares of the newspaper from Grigsby and Mayo and have
maintained ownership until selling to Wesner last week.
“We feel confident selling
the paper to Mr. Wesner because he is a veteran journalist who has a proven
track record of maintaining quality publications,” Steve Mathis said. “He comes
from a newspaper family and has been in this business as long as we have.”
“I am very excited to have the opportunity to
serve Lincoln County,” Wesner said. “The Lincoln County News has always been
one of the finest weeklies in the state, and I will work hard to continue that
tradition.”
