CHOTEAU — Melody and Jeff Martinsen, owners of the Choteau Acantha, dropped off that week’s edition of the weekly newspaper at their local post office on Tuesday, Jan. 7, right on schedule. The night before, per usual, the Acantha staff had sent the paper to be printed in Bozeman and delivered to Conrad. Just hours after putting the issue to bed, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a local bartender reported a fire at the Acantha’s building. While fire crews put out the blaze, Melody, the editor, drafted a story detailing the incident, which had destroyed much of the publication’s home of 30 years. She had not slept since the fire. related Fire damages Choteau Acantha newspaper building A fire damaged part of the Choteau Acantha’s building. No one was injured. The blaze nearly destroyed one of the building’s three rooms and severely damaged items in adjacent rooms. by Zeke Lloyd 01.07.202501.08.2025 Late Tuesday morning, Melody and Jeff unloaded the freshly printed papers out of a flatbed truck in the icy parking lot of Choteau’s post office. Taking careful steps on the slick concrete, Melody paused to look at the Acantha building, just a block away, which she and Jeff had purchased and moved the newspaper to in 1995. The windows were shattered and a line of yellow barricade tape surrounded the property. She didn’t know it at the time, but the Teton County Sheriff’s Office later identified a faulty space heater as the cause of the fire. What she already knew, just hours after the blaze had been put out, was that Choteau was stepping up to help.“We’ve had offers for space to move into, office furniture, and whatever we might need to get on our feet,” Melody said. “And that’s what we’re going to do.”Choteau’s stoplight marks the center of the small, north-central Montana town. Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFP“Our employees are going to be taken care of and we’re going to take care of our community. And our community is already trying to take care of us.”A few days later, the Martinsens picked up a desk from the local insurance company office of Chris Hindoien, who is also Choteau’s mayor.“They’re not going to miss a beat,” Hindoien said in an interview the Sunday after the fire. “Melody and Jeff would not let that happen.”The Acantha shares coverage of Teton County with the Times-Leader, previously known as the Fairfield Sun Times, a weekly newspaper published in Fairfield, 17 miles to the southeast. But north of Choteau, the Martinsens look out on a front line of Montana’s expanding news desert. Only two print newspapers continue to publish between Teton County and Canada, an area roughly twice the size of Yellowstone National Park. Based in Conrad, in Pondera County, the Independent Observer was purchased by the Mullen Newspaper Company in August 2024. The region’s other papers — the Cut Bank Pioneer Press, Shelby Promoter, Glacier Reporter, and The Valierian — combined into a single print edition in 2020. By 2025, the Mullen-affiliated Ponderosa Publications had acquired the four newspapers and rolled the Liberty Chronicle into the combined print paper. The Great Falls Tribune, the closest major daily, operating roughly 50 miles to the southeast, currently employs just one full-time reporter.The Choteau/Teton Public Library stores a nearly complete set of Choteau Acantha editions. Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFPThe Acantha sells a one-year in-county subscription for $43, roughly 83 cents per edition. Six newspaper racks across the county sell the paper for $1 a copy. Additional Acantha income comes from its in-house commercial printing business and the sale of office supplies. The newspaper produces revenue through single-copy purchases, subscriptions and advertising across the paper’s print and digital platforms.In 2025, roughly a third of households in the county — more than 900 — subscribed to the Acantha, a number that’s grown since the Martinsens purchased the paper in 1990, Melody said.Amy Bechtold, owner of downtown Choteau’s Curly Willow Floral and Gifts and the yoga studio upstairs, said she’s read the Acantha every week for 30 years and advertises in the paper frequently. Advertisers like Bechtold work with Jeff Martinsen, the paper’s publisher and advertising manager. “They treat you like gold,” Bechtold said. “They’re the glue that holds this town together.”In the years after Bechtold’s parents left Choteau to live in Vermont, she bought them a subscription to the Acantha. “It’s a great gift for family members who have grandkids in the school system,” she said.Jeff Martinsen folds papers for distribution through the post office. Credit: Courtesy Choteau Acantha“It’s got one hell of a sports page,” said District 9 Sen. Bruce Gillespie, R-Ethridge, who represents Choteau, Shelby, Conrad, Fairfield and Lincoln. “They take really good care of their young kids competing in sports, and sports are important in these little towns.”“You get news about your neighbors,” said Rep. Zack Wirth, R-Wolf Creek, who represents Choteau as part of House District 17.Wirth’s sister, Mickey Hodgskiss, frequently works with the Acantha to advertise her Country Hallmark store, which sells holiday cards, gifts and decorations. On Jan. 8, she was taking down the shop’s Christmas collection and stocking the shelves for Valentine’s Day with pink and red merchandise.“What’s nice about your little local paper is that they are still talking about local things,” Hodgskiss said. “If it’s a local wedding, we don’t send out local invitations, we put it in the paper.” Mary Hodgskiss, sister of Rep. Zack Wirth, R-Ethridge, owns the Country Hallmark in downtown Choteau. Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFPA block south of the Country Hallmark, Choteau City Council member Sara Coccoli works at Teton County Abstract Company, where a 65-pound mutt named Tillie bounded around the office, looking to play. Coccoli said most people in town keep clippings from the most recent Acantha, if not the whole paper, around the house for a full week.“That’s where everybody knows what movies are showing,” Coccoli said. In addition to publishing movie times and wedding notices, the Acantha reports on City Council meetings in Choteau and neighboring towns and community events like Teton Bear Smart trainings. “They are everywhere all the time,” Coccoli said. On Tuesday, Jan. 7, less than 24 hours after the fire, Melody Martinsen attended that evening’s Choteau City Council meeting at City Hall, just two blocks down the road from the charred Acantha building.No one was surprised to see her there. The Martinsens have not missed a week of publication, nor left Choteau for more than five consecutive days, since they bought the paper. At official proceedings, civil servants often seek insight from Melody, one of the town’s leading experts on local governance and county history. Mary Sexton, a longtime public official, now retired, who worked for a number of statewide agencies, including an 8-year tenure as director of Natural Resources and Conservation under Gov. Brian Schweitzer, recalled Melody’s expertise in the 1990s when Sexton served on the Teton County Commission. “She probably has the best historical knowledge, not only of people and place, but of political history,” Sexton said. “If the City Council or the county commissioners have a question about what happened when or who did what when, Melody knows. She is a reference library for local information.”The American Legion Bar, located a block away from the Choteau Acantha building, employs bartender Caine Gray, who first reported the fire. Credit: Zeke Lloyd / MTFPLike Sexton, Melody Martinsen gained a journalistic reputation at the statewide level.“She represents not only local issues, but also freedom of information and the Montana Constitution,” Sexton said. “She is a stickler for those.”In 2023, Martinsen challenged an executive branch refusal to allow public access to candidate interviews to fill the vacated role of a retiring 9th Judicial District judge. “They are not undergoing a personnel performance review with their boss. They are not applying for a job in the private sector. They are not even applying for a public employee position. They are applying for an elected position, a position in which every person in the 9th Judicial District is their de facto boss,” Melody said.When the advisory council conducting the interviews denied her request, Melody published the news as usual. (In April 2023, the Acantha and Montana Free Press successfully sued to ensure future judicial vacancy interviews will be open to the public.) Jim Strauss, communications and development director of the Montana Newspaper Association, described Jeff, Melody and the Acantha as “pillars within the Montana newspaper industry.” Both have served as MNA presidents.“It has a reputation, and not only in Teton County,” Strauss said. “This is a newspaper that has multiple times been named Montana’s best weekly.”“If it’s a local wedding, we don’t send out local invitations, we put it in the paper.” Country Hallmark store owner Mickey HodgskissAfter graduating from Choteau High School in 1983 and enrolling at the  University of Montana, Melody had not intended to return to Choteau. She majored in journalism and minored in Russian language with aspirations to become a foreign correspondent for Time magazine. But after she graduated from UM in 1987, the Great Falls Tribune offered her a job.“I learned there that I loved Montana and I loved the country. And I didn’t want to leave anymore,” Melody said. In 1990, the Martinsens bought the Acantha from its previous owner, Richard Nordhagen. “Our idea when we came back to Choteau and took the paper was that we were going to make it the most comprehensive local newspaper in our county,” Melody said. “Our vision was to expand the almost exclusively Choteau coverage that was in the Acantha to include the rest of the county — Fairfield, Dutton, Power, Bynum, Golden Ridge, Greenfield, Pendroy, all the little places.” Almost 35 years later, the Acantha employs two full-time and three part-time employees in addition to Melody and Jeff. “All of their jobs are safe,” Melody said the morning after the fire. “Everybody is going to get paid.” Melody spent the day on Jan. 7 organizing equipment salvaged from the fire, including the tripod, camera, microphone and laptop she uses to stream City Council meetings on the Acantha’s Facebook page. She wheeled the contents around in a large black case.“It’s still covered with soot, but it came out just fine,” she said.Kalamazoo, the office tuxedo cat, was likewise not harmed in the fire. But Melody lamented the end of the feline’s long history of eating breakfast, served by Jeff, inside the Acantha building. “There’s just no way to explain this to a cat.”Kalamazoo rests on Melody Martinsen’s lap at the Acantha office. Credit: Courtest Choteau AcanthaLike the Acantha, Kalamazoo is a Choteau staple. According to Jessica Jensen, a paralegal at Bieler Law downtown, the cat is well-known in the community, having spent his younger years cruising between restaurants and businesses along the town’s one-stoplight Main Avenue until eventually settling into a habit of spending most days at the Acantha building.Kristin Inbody, a Choteau native now living in Great Falls, found her own passion for journalism when she started publishing articles about 4-H at the age of 9. “Every month we would put an update from the club about what was going on in the Acantha,” Inbody said. In college at the University of Montana, she job-shadowed reporters at the Acantha. Later, she spent nine years reporting for the Great Falls Tribune. Inbody remains a lifelong Acantha reader and subscriber. In August 2019, the paper reported on a grass fire that swept across the Inbodys’ farmland, drawing community members to help put out the blaze.“How do you say thank you to all the people who showed up to help you?” Inbody asked. “Some you know really well, some just showed up because the need was there. So you go to the Acantha and you take out an ad that says, ‘Thank you to our neighbors.’”Now, members of the Choteau community are giving back to the Acantha. On Jan. 9, the paper announced on Facebook that it has all the donated desks and chairs it needs. The staff is working out of the historic bank building downtown. The Jan. 16 issue featured a phoenix behind the nameplate.“It’s the physical representation of these community ties,” Inbody said of the Acantha. “It’s the printed version of what it is to be in our community.” latest stories Legislative records that shine a light on bill drafting process public again, judge orders Back-channel communications between Montana lawmakers, lobbyists and stakeholders when drafting bills are once again open to the public following a court order. by Tom Lutey 01.21.202501.21.2025 Democrats pitch property tax relief via income tax credit A measure pitched by the Democrats in the Montana Legislature would take aim at rising homeowner property bills by offering an income tax credit, offsetting a portion of property tax payments for homeowners and renter households earning up to $150,000 a year. by Eric Dietrich 01.21.202501.21.2025 Former St. Peter’s nurse pleads not guilty to felony charge A former St. Peter’s Health nurse pleaded not guilty to a felony charge that alleges he sexually assaulted a former patient. by JoVonne Wagner 01.21.202501.21.2025 The post After fire, Choteau Acantha perseveres appeared first on Montana Free Press.