Feature

From the ground up

The Crested Butte News, a successful independent newspaper in a small Rocky Mountain town, has come full circle and is once again owned by a chain

Editor's Note

Homegrown news: Money can't buy it

In an introduction to this special issue celebrating independent media, High Country News associate editor Jonathan Thompson recalls the exciting, exhausting, high-caffeine years he spent publishing his own newspaper in a small mountain town

Dear Friends

Dear friends

High Country News needs your support; visitors; corrections

Dottie Fox, one of the greatest old broads

Dottie Fox, a tireless wilderness advocate and co-founder of the group Great Old Broads for Wilderness, dies after a long fight with cancer

Writers on the Range

Leave only footprints, and turn the darn phone off

Cell phones have their uses, but they do not belong in the wilderness

News

Roadless returns!

Judge reinstates Clinton roadless rule

It's shady in the Interior

Interior Department blasted by its own watchdog

Half a Roan for gas, and half for everyone else

Nobody’s happy with BLM’s Roan Plateau plan

Take that nuke waste and shove it

Skull Valley Goshute Tribe’s nuclear-waste storage plan rejected

Free will flounders in the courts

Judges throw out some libertarian ballot measures

The longevity of place and race

Life expectancy in the West

Give us your poor, your uninsured...

Many Westerners live in poverty, but even more lack health insurance

'They both do not exist'

Quote by Wyoming Attorney General Patrick Crank

Undaunted muckraker

Navajo Times reporter Marley Shebala is a fiercely determined journalist whose investigative reporting has helped bring down two tribal presidents

Zine Roundup: Sweet simplicity

Since 1992, Dan Price has been publishing a hand-drawn, illustrated zine called Moonlight Chronicles from his tiny, hobbit-style home in a meadow in Joseph, Ore.

Zine Roundup: Gone fishing

A 38-year-old female deckhand who calls herself Moe Bowstern created the zine called Xtra Tuf to explore the turbulent culture of the fishing industry

Film: Lens of compassion

Peter Richardson created an independent film called Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon, to illuminate a culture clash that was tearing his hometown apart

Radio: Spice for the ears

Hearing Voices, a collective of independent radio producers, is working to add spice to public broadcasting

More Radio Waves

Independent radio series and specials cover community sustainability

Online: Web watchdog

Dave Frazier started the online Boise Guardian in order to keep an eye on local government and rile his fellow citizens

Online: No more talking heads

Jennifer Napier-Pearce uses her own money to produce a Salt Lake City-based podcast called Inside Utah

Waterblogged

Rick Spilsbury, a Western Shoshone Indian, writes bitingly and sometimes hilariously about Nevada’s water issues on his "noshootfoot" blog

The wet Net

John Orr created his "Coyote Gulch" blog to follow Denver-area politics and Colorado water issues

Sleepers

Several magazines and newspapers provide good independent commentary on water in the West, but there is always room for more

The myth trafficker

Keoki Skinner deals lemonade and information from his yellow fruit-stand van in the border communities of Douglas, Ariz., and Agua Prieta, Mexico

Book Reviews

A tribal renaissance

In Blood Struggle, law professor Charles Wilkinson gives an inspiring account of Indians’ political and legal struggles during the last 50 years

What's wrong with the EPA?

David Schoenbrod explains why the nation’s environmental laws are not being properly implemented in Saving Our Environment From Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility and Shortchanges the People

Big yellow taxi — in Duke City

Yellow Cab is anthropology professor Robert Leonard’s poetic account of his after-dark journeys as a cab driver in Albuquerque

Essays

Our Green Mountain

A writer recalls the adventures he had had in Quincy, Calif., 20 years ago, when he was the youthful editor of a small-town independent paper called the Green Mountain Gazette

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Bunker home for sale; Utah FastPass spins out; zinfandel loses in California; fear of snakes in Mapleton, Utah; Redi Ripe fruit stickers; fighting tamarisk in California

Letters

The BLM chooses to say 'yes'

Fight fire with fire

Nuclear power is no silver bullet

The next boom: oil shale

Enviros avoid the real problem

Resist!

Related Stories

Stirring the pot

The North Coast Journal has been published in Arcata, Calif., for almost 18 years by Judy Hodgson, a journalist who believes in stirring the pot

A paper with bite

The Taos Horse Fly, with its biting journalism, does its best to live up to its name

News from the gas fields

Roughneck is a two-year-old monthly devoted to covering the oil and gas industry in Sublette County, Wyoming