To the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming,
I learned with alarm that there is a proposal to slash the budget of the University of Wyoming’s
student newspaper, the Branding Iron. While I am keenly aware of budget concerns, I would urge you to
consider the history and important role the B.I. has played since its inception. Certainly young journalists
can learn from classes at the university, nothing can compare to the hands-on experience offered by a
student-run and staffed newspaper.
The service provided to the student body is invaluable. With diminishing resources and staff
journalists, many papers around the state have simply been able to pay close attention to the University,
which represents a major portion of this state’s biennial and supplemental budgets. Indeed, the B.I. may
be one of the last resources for timely and insightful reportage of university issues for the entire state.
Over the years, B.I. reporters have broken a number of major stories that were only later picked up by
local and statewide news outlets.
Many of us got our careers started at the B.I. After leaving UW, I spent 25 years as a journalist, first
working for Wyoming Public Radio, then the Casper Star-Tribune, followed by time as a press secretary
for Senator Alan Simpson, when he was G.O.P. Whip of the U.S. Senate. My experience then allowed me
to spend 17 years covering the sport of bicycle racing both domestically and internationally. During that
time, I managed to write extensively about the Tour de France and the problems of doping in sport.
Despite the fact that I never earned my undergraduate degree, I managed to convince the University of
Wyoming Law School that my 11,000+ articles and seven books were at least the rough equivalent of a
B.A. in English. I have since practiced law for more than a decade and served in the Wyoming House of
Representatives for six years. Frankly, none of that would have been possible had I not gotten my start as
a student journalist at the Branding Iron.
I am certainly not alone in that club. There are dozens of respected journalists who cut their
respective teeth at the Branding Iron. Polk Award winning reporter Andrew Melnykovych served on B.I.
staff before launching a 40+ year career in the field. Matthew Winters, editor of Washington State’s
Chinook Observer, the late Debra Beck, who went on to teach at the University of Wyoming, Erich
Kirshner, who had a long career at Wyoming and Colorado newspapers before opening a successful
public relations firm, which often relied on UW graduates and B.I. alumni to fill critical staffing roles.
These folks are just a few of the success stories from my time at the B.I. The decades since are filled with
similarly successful careers that started with work at the Branding Iron.
The proposed cuts are so severe that they would essentially represent the death knell for a
publication that has served the students of the University of Wyoming, student journalists who learn
valuable lessons about responsible news coverage and, quite often, the people of the state of Wyoming. I
would strongly urge you to consider the ramifications of such major cuts to a publication with a long and proud history at U.W.
Respectfully submitted,
Charles F. Pelkey
