Small newspaper gets new start after runaway ambulance wrecks building

Thursday, June 11, 1998 | 10:12 a.m.

Three years after a runaway ambulance crashed into the paper's old building, about 100 people turned out Wednesday night for a formal dedication of a new home for the 78-year-old publication.

"I didn't expect to ever see this," admitted George Carnes, publisher of the paper with a circulation of 2,600, founded in 1920. "This reflects tremendous support from our community."

The front of the old brick building was demolished in July 1995 when an ambulance slammed into it on Main Street, killing the ambulance driver who apparently had blacked out.

"It just missed me by inches," said editor Kent Harper, who was inside that Saturday morning, working on a special edition commemorating the paper's 75th anniversary, when the plate glass window shattered and bricks started flying.

"You know that sound that an accident makes? That crunch? I heard the crunch but I couldn't move," Harper recalled during an interview at his new desk Wednesday night.

Harper ended up under a table and escaped with a cut to the head.

The next day the newspaper's staff of 17 set up shop temporarily at the local chamber of commerce office. The Las Vegas Review Journal, a fellow member of the Donrey Media Group, pitched in to help print Monday's paper. But after that, the Ely Daily Times handled all of its own production, missing not a single day of publication, the printing presses rolling inside an old car dealer's maintenance garage.

Excepting holidays, it has printed every Monday through Friday since its founding.

"In my memory, it's always been here," said Mayor Jack Smith, 74, who was born and raised in the small mining town of 5,000 on U.S. Highway 50 about 50 miles from the Utah state line.

"We're so isolated we don't get any big city dailies. It documents the events of Ely and the county. It serves a good purpose."

Ely (pronounced ee-lee) was named after Selby Copper Mining President Smith Ely and flourished with the arrival of the railroad at the close of the 19th century. Daily copper, gold and silver prices still adorn a front-page column of each Ely Daily Times along with the weather forecast and local meeting notices.

"Fair, consistent and community oriented," Carnes, the publisher since 1965, said in explaining the paper's aim.

Emmet Jones, president of the Donrey Media Group that owns the paper, said small newspapers have a special role in these times of unrest in the newspaper industry.

"In some respects, they are the only ones who can serve a community this size," said Jones, who was among Donrey officers who traveled to the Ely dedication from corporate headquarters in Arkansas.

"The Ely Daily Times IS their source of news. We plan on publishing this newspaper a very long time," said.

Dave Osborne, Donrey's western vice president, and Sherman R. Frederick, publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal, were among others attending the dedication.

The newspaper features a mix of local news - on Wednesday an update on area highway construction projects and a community cleanup effort - and national and international reports.

A locally drawn cartoon Wednesday showed a bewildered President Clinton looking at a Vanity Fair magazine opened like a centerfold, apparently ogling pictures of Monica Lewinsky, who recently posed for that publication.

Harper said the newspaper didn't give much coverage to the original crash into the building in deference to family members of the young ambulance driver who died.

"We ran just one story. We kept it low key. We are everybody's scrapbook."