(PUEBLO, Colo.) — The Pueblo Chieftain’s corporate owner, Gannett, will be shutting down the newspaper’s Pueblo printing operation and selling its longtime office on Sixth Street, according to a press release from the Pueblo News Guild.

The press release states that the printing operation will now be outsourced to Denver, which will eliminate 51 Pueblo jobs.

The Guild said since the Rawlings family sold the Chieftain in 2018, dozens of jobs have been cut, and decisions by corporate executives has diminished the quality of the paper.

“A local newspaper is vital to any community, not only for informing citizens of important daily activities and news but by shining a light on government accountability, highlighting vital community issues in depth and leading calls to action,” said the Pueblo News Guild. “For a newspaper to be all those things it needs to be taken seriously as a stalwart member of the community, not a gutted shell of what it once had been.”

The Guild added that its printing press at the Chieftain is one of the only remaining large-scale news presses in Colorado, and dozens of other publications around the region are printed there. The Guild expressed concern for the future this decision may have on those publications’ future printing availabilities and costs.