Normally promoting this week’s publication, a blue newsstand for the Boulder Weekly on Table Mesa Drive opened up to a stack of papers from past weeks.

The most recent publication came out just before Editor-In-Chief Shay Castle was fired on July 2, and less than a week before the rest of the publication’s reporters were laid off on Wednesday.

Jezy Gray, who was Boulder Weekly’s arts and culture editor until Monday, said he was offered Castle’s job, but he, too, quit. He said tension had simmered between the staff and ownership in the past six months.

The owner, Stewart Sallo, said he’s not sure when the paper would be back in publication, according to media reports. Sallo did not return requests for comment.

Boulder Weekly has published weekly papers for free every Thursday since 1993. It’s Boulder County’s only independently owned newspaper, according to the publication’s website.

The Boulder Reporting Lab and Boulder Daily Camera are the two other major news publications in the city, with Boulder Daily Camera operating since 1890 and Boulder Reporting Lab since 2021.

Boulder Weekly’s email newsletter had about 20,000 subscribers, Castle told The Denver Gazette. Their print distribution had about 25,000 readers, as of its last analysis in 2020, she said. 

In a LinkedIn post announcing her firing, Castle said the decision came after “months of protest and increasing tensions over current ownership practices.”