One of red-rock Utah's icons, Moab's outspoken Canyon Country Zephyr soon will no longer appear in print.

The Zephyr, with its famous caricatures of advertisers, nostalgia for Moab's old days and refreshingly ornery disposition, will continue online, says owner/publisher/editor/writer/driver Jim Stiles, but, after five more issues, will no longer flop down in coffee shops and cafes across the state.

Stiles admits his relentless criticism of Moab's growth from an eclectic mix of river runners, hippies, ranchers and uranium miners into an amenities economy has made it impossible to bring in enough money to support the Zephyr in print. It says something good about the Zephyr that Stiles has been denounced by developers and environmentalists.

Though his long-time advertisers remain loyal, Stiles says new advertisers are hard to attract. Of course, his saying things like, "Moab has no soul. It's just a real estate market..." and cartoons like the one above — while true and important — also enrage the town's new growth-dependent business owners.

Seldom do the new owners want to continue with the Zephyr ads, and I don't blame them. I speak my mind and take my lumps. The Zephyr's message is hardly the philosophy they dare embrace if they hope to assure their own survival....

I take my job seriously, and have always believed that being honest and even-handed, regardless of the consequences, was essential to good journalism. And so for the last ten years, I have tried to inform my readers of the impacts the amenities economy can create, even when it put me at odds with my own friends and the very advertisers who keep this paper alive.

Stiles says that after the February-March 2009 edition, readers will be offered a PDF online version of the Zephyr that will look exactly as it does now (except with more color). "Yes, the cartoons will still be there. It's the only paper I ever heard of that people tell me they read the ads before the stories."

Still, he admits, he will miss holding the paper Zephyr in his hands. "It actually hurts to think about it."

Stiles says by eliminating printing and distribution costs (he uses an '86 GMC pickup), "I'm hoping I can cut my ad rates by 50 percent."

I fear that as old Moab's characters die off to be replaced by rich retirees, baristas and Realtors, the Zephyr will become as endangered as the humpbacked chub, another southern Utah old-timer developers have no use for.