CHEYENNE — For Vince Bodiford and his wife, Jeanette, there’s no place they’d rather put down anchor than Cheyenne.
Since moving to Wyoming’s capital city more than five years ago, the Bodifords have enjoyed the friendliness of the people, the strong sense of community and the welcoming business environment. From the start, Laramie County has felt like home to the couple, who started The Cheyenne Post shortly after moving here in April 2019.
On Monday, APG of the Rockies acquired The Cheyenne Post from Golden Media Inc. and named Vince Bodiford as its new regional president. Adams Publishing Group is the owner of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, the Laramie Boomerang, the Rawlins Times and the Rocket Miner in Rock Springs, all of which Bodiford will oversee.
“We just always felt at home on the Front Range,” said Bodiford, who has lots of family in the area and used to run newspapers in Nebraska and Colorado. “Wyoming was always the place that we would go, even when we lived in Golden, in Colorado, or when we lived in Nebraska. We always found ourselves in Cheyenne, either for shopping, or for dinners, or (Cheyenne Frontier Days) ... and this goes way back to the mid-’90s.
“We made a commitment to Cheyenne a long time ago, and we love the community, and we’re deeply engrained.”
The media business has been a central part of Bodiford’s life since age 13, when he started at a small weekly newspaper in southern California.
“The kids, we would go down to the newspaper building on Tuesday nights, and for 5 bucks, we would insert the grocery insert (into the newspaper), so that was the first money I ever made at a newspaper,” Bodiford said. “At 16, I started to sell advertising for my high school yearbook. So, my whole life has all been centered around newspapers.”
In 1993, Bodiford founded Golden Media Inc., and bought and operated newspapers in Colorado and Texas as the company’s president and publisher. He orchestrated a merger with the Sentinel group in Denver, then was named president of the successor company, JeffCo Publishing Inc.
After a five-year stint as group marketing manager for Cabela’s, he served as strategic sales manager for The Arizona Republic, a Gannett publication in Phoenix, and azcentral.com. He then served as group publisher for Orange County Neighborhood Newspapers, Inc. for nearly six years, based in Seal Beach, California, before working for Gatehouse Media in Monroe, Michigan, as president and publisher of Monroe Media Group and Lenawee Media Group.
He also founded and is majority owner of NewsMakers Media, a strategic communications and media relations firm with offices in Michigan, Texas and Wyoming, and has operated a group of 90 television stations across the United States.
Bodiford was an early adopter of new technology, launching his first newspaper website in 1996, followed by TheWeekendDrive.com in 1999. As digital technology began to rapidly expand, he quickly joined Facebook and other platforms, which created a consistent vision of a truly multimedia industry.
“But it all goes back to the content. It has to be original, local, relevant, engaging, accurate, reliable ... all those things that, I think, are what you do here, right? It’s the glue that holds the whole town together,” he said. “I think that communities are being held together by that glue, but they’re unaware of how important that is.”
He started The Cheyenne Post in 2019 as a digital-only publication that he called his “sandbox,” a place to “experiment with a variety of different content-delivery concepts.” It had a print component for two years that was printed at the WTE before going back to exclusively digital.
As for the future of The Cheyenne Post, Bodiford said that remains to be seen.
“Together, we’re going to evaluate what’s the best next step,” he said. “We don’t know that yet. We’re going to figure it out together and do what’s right.”
Bodiford, 62, takes the reins from Bill Albrecht, who served as regional president since March 2021. Albrecht remains with APG, moving to Coon Rapids, Minnesota, (a suburb of Minneapolis) to become the company’s regional president of ECM (East Central Minnesota).
The move allows him and his wife, Lisa, to be closer to their children and grandchildren.
“Lisa and I very much enjoyed our time in southern Wyoming, a part of the country that we never imagined we would be living in, but are grateful that we had,” Albrecht said. “My time with APG of the Rockies, in moving through the transition of our industry, has been very fulfilling, and I’m very proud of what we have accomplished in just three-and-a-half years.”
As for his new role as a member of the APG team, Bodiford said, “The way that people receive and consume information about their communities that they live in is constantly changing. What I hope to do is to understand what those needs are and deliver that to them in a way that makes this a sustainable business.
“It already is a great business, it’s a great brand, it’s great people. It really boils down to the community, the people, and what’s the information they need and want, and when do they need it, and in what format.”
Bodiford said he looks forward to new collaborations, new initiatives and new ways of delivering the content that’s most relevant to people’s lives.
“I’ve always said, APG owns the business, but the community owns the WTE.”
