GREEN BAY – The Green Bay Packers business model might help save a newspaper, which would be appropriate since a newspaper helped save the Packers.

Leaders of The Sentinel, a weekly publication in Aurora, Colorado with twice-daily email newsletters, have been investigating whether the Packers’ model, based on public ownership of the team, could provide financial viability to the news organization. 

This week, Dave Perry, editor of The Sentinel, and Laura Frank, executive director of Colorado News Collaborative, attended the Packers annual shareholders’ meeting at Lambeau Field so they could see up close what drove 539,062 shareholders, many from them outside of Wisconsin, to invest in the Packers.

“I was on a Zoom call with Colorado Public Radio and their head of news,” Frank said. “I was saying ‘I’m going out to Green Bay and we’re going to do this,’ and over his shoulder he had a framed stock certificate for the Packers.”