Okeene Record
The Okeene Record is a weekly newspaper serving Okeene and Blaine County in western Oklahoma, published continuously since 1918. The Oklahoma Encyclopedia, published by the Oklahoma Historical Society, describes Okeene simply as having "a weekly newspaper, the Okeene Record" — a one-line definition of the paper's place in its town. State newspaper listings have put its circulation at about 1,200. Since July 2013 the Record has been owned by Paul and Maria Laubach of Okeene through Trail Miller Company, LLC, a small western Oklahoma newspaper group that also publishes The Canton Times, The Dewey County Record in Seiling, The Hennessey Clipper and The Thomas Tribune. News for the paper is submitted through its Trail Miller address, and it publishes online at okeenerecord.com.
Beginnings in 1918
The United States Newspaper Directory records the Okeene Record as published in Okeene, Blaine County, from 1918 to the present. Media directory listings phrase its service as "serving the Okeene community since 1919," a one-year difference that reflects the paper's start at the very end of 1918: a surviving 1910s-era masthead shows the Record was entered as second-class mail matter on November 29, 1918, at the post office in Okeene, under the postal act governing periodicals, and published weekly at Okeene. Subscriptions at that time cost two dollars a year in the Okeene community, two dollars and fifty cents elsewhere in Oklahoma and three dollars outside the state, with all news items due in the office by noon to make that week's publication.
The Record arrived at the end of a crowded era of Okeene journalism. Earlier papers in the town included the Okeene Eagle, published from 1894 to 1918; the Okeene Leader, from 1906 into the 1920s; and the Okeene Democrat, from 1916 to 1918. The Record outlasted them all, becoming the town's permanent newspaper just as the others ceased, and Newspapers.com's archive of the Okeene Record spans from 1918 to 1963 for researchers tracing Blaine County families through its birth, marriage and obituary notices.
Okeene: The Town the Record Serves
Okeene is a small town in eastern Blaine County, in Oklahoma's western wheat country. Its population climbed slowly to 1,170 in 1950 and 1,421 in 1970, peaked at 1,601 in 1980, and then declined to 1,343, 1,240 in 1990 and 2000, 1,204 in 2010 and 1,085 at the April 2020 census. The town is served by Farmrail, a short-line rail system serving western Oklahoma's wheat-growing region, and by Christman Airfield. Local structures on the National Register of Historic Places include the Okeene Flour Mill, the Shinn Family Barn and the Sooner Coop Association Elevator, West — landmarks of the grain economy the Record has always covered.
The town's best-known institution is its rattlesnake hunt: the International Association of Rattlesnake Hunters was headquartered at Okeene, and a rattlesnake hunt was held annually, drawing visitors to a town of a thousand people. Nearby Roman Nose State Park and Canton Lake provide recreation, and Okeene's public school system, accredited through high school, grew from a one-room building with eight grades in 1901. The Record's coverage — town government, schools, churches, clubs, wheat and cattle country news, and events like the rattlesnake hunt — mirrors that community almost exactly.
Mid-Century Publishers
The Record's mid-century identity is visible in its surviving pages. Mastheads from its membership years in the Oklahoma Press Association name the Martz and Gernert families in the publisher's role — Jeanne M. Gernert's "Knick-Knacks" column, a chatty, personal feature of local observations, weather, family pets and neighborhood notes, shows the intimate register of the postwar country weekly, in which the publisher's column doubled as a community conversation. The Record maintained its Oklahoma Press Association membership across those decades, as its 1999 member masthead attests, keeping Okeene's paper part of the statewide fraternity of community newspapers.
Mack Miller and Miller Publications
For many years before 2013 the Record was published by Mack Miller, through Miller Publications Inc., based at 211 South Main Street in Okeene. State newspaper listings credited the Okeene Record to Mack Miller as publisher, with a circulation of about 1,200. Miller's company published a family of western Oklahoma weeklies from Okeene: the Okeene Record, The Canton Times — the Canton paper shares the Record's site — the Dewey County Record in Seiling and The Hennessey Clipper in Kingfisher County. Together the Miller papers covered a contiguous stretch of Blaine, Dewey and Kingfisher county farm country northwest of Oklahoma City.
The Laubach Purchase and Trail Miller Company, 2013
In July 2013, Paul and Maria Laubach of Okeene purchased The Okeene Record, The Canton Times and The Dewey County Record in Seiling from Mack and Connie Miller, as the Oklahoma Press Association's magazine, The Oklahoma Publisher, reported that month. Dr. Maria Laubach was named manager of Trail Miller Co., LLC, a newly formed company and a subsidiary of the Laubach family's other business holdings in oil and gas investments and farm and ranch operations across 13 western Oklahoma counties — an ownership profile rooted in the same agricultural region the newspapers cover.
Maria Laubach holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Education and a Master of Arts in German from the University of Oklahoma, and a Bachelor of Arts in Pedagogy from Saratov State University in Russia. At the time of the purchase the Laubachs had two children, Alex, age five, and Sophia, age one. Announcing the purchase, Laubach said she looked forward to working with Mack Miller and all of the staff at the papers, hoped readers would participate by sharing their views, and described the free press as one of the foundations of the country. The Record's news email address still carries the Trail Miller name, and its website resolves to the Trail Miller Company's site.
Growth of the Trail Miller Group
Under Trail Miller, the group of papers has been managed as a single small chain with shared staff. By 2017 the company's four newspapers were The Hennessey Clipper, The Canton Times, The Okeene Record and The Dewey County Record in Seiling. In February 2019 the group grew again when The Thomas Tribune — published continuously in Custer County since 1902 — was sold to Trail Miller, as reported by the Clinton Daily News. Staff writers have been hired to cover the papers jointly: in 2019, for example, Ashley Haley joined Trail Miller as a staff writer for the Okeene Record, The Canton Times, The Hennessey Clipper and The Dewey County Record, covering breaking news, council meetings, crime and local events — a description that maps precisely the beats of the Record itself.
The Record's digital operation runs through eType Services, the publishing platform used by many Oklahoma weeklies: readers can read or subscribe to the paper online, and its legal notices are published and archived through the same system, preserving its function as a newspaper of record for Blaine County public notices.
Coverage and Community Role
The Record performs the full range of a western Oklahoma county weekly's work: Okeene city council and Blaine County news, school board coverage and Okeene school sports, farm and ranch news for the wheat belt, church and club news, obituaries, classifieds and legal publications. Its circulation of roughly 1,200 against a town population of about 1,100 is typical of a healthy county weekly whose subscribers are spread across the surrounding farm community and include former residents out of county and out of state — the same subscription structure the paper advertised a century ago.
Legacy
Born in the last weeks of 1918, as the Okeene Eagle, Leader and Democrat were all ending their runs, the Okeene Record became the survivor that has now served Blaine County for more than a century. It has passed from its early publishers through the Martz and Gernert years, the Mack Miller era at Miller Publications, and since 2013 the Laubach family's Trail Miller Company, without ever leaving Okeene or changing the basic bargain of a country weekly: local names, local government, local schools and local land, in print every week and now online as well.
