Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Undaunted muckraker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Dan Price’s media empire is centered in a kind of hobbit hole in a meadow in Joseph, Ore., where his 2003 Toshiba photocopier prints 200 copies every two months of […]
Zine Roundup: Sweet simplicity
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Undaunted muckraker
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. How many American journalists can claim that their reporting helped oust two presidents? Navajo Times reporter Marley Shebala can: Her tireless muckraking helped lead to the downfall — and eventual imprisonment — of Navajo Nation Chairman […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
News from the gas fields
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: Roughneck is a two-year-old monthly covering oil and gas in Sublette County, Wyo., the top natural gas producing county in the U.S. Local media scene: Two local weeklies, including the Pinedale Roundup, cover community news; Roughneck’s […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
A paper with bite
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: The Taos Horse Fly is a 7-year-old monthly whose name says it all: Its stories sometimes leave bite marks. Local media scene: Dominated by the long-lived weekly Taos News, owned by the same company that owns […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Stirring the pot
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: The North Coast Journal, published weekly in Arcata, Calif., for almost 18 years, features in-depth journalism with a strong arts and entertainment section. The local media scene: Two dailies, one printed in Humboldt County for many […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Dear friends
HCN NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT It’s that time of year again, when we come to you on bended knee, asking for help keeping High Country News going. Unless you’ve given recently to our Research Fund, you should be receiving a letter soon. For comments from writer Jane Braxton Little about the importance of the Research Fund, […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Homegrown news: Money can’t buy it
Note: this essay introduces several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. A hissing wind blew against the wavy glass of the single-pane window. My fingers pounded on the sticky keyboard. It was 2 in the morning. I’d given up drinking coffee a few hours earlier and was now mainlining, […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
From the ground up
A staff walks out; a grassroots newspaper is born
Posted inWotr
Thanks, neighbors
I took a long trip with my family this summer, six weeks away from home. Well before we left, during the school year, we found some ideal house sitters. A young couple my wife knew who needed a place during that same time and who were eager to trade some yard work and house upkeep. […]
Posted inWotr
The time I was struck by lightning
Just about everyone who has spent time in the high country has a lightning story to tell — when lightning cracked open a nearby tree, or how their hair stood on end and they got out of there. I’d been in Colorado a short time and was ignorant about everything Western when I decided to […]
Posted inWotr
Fire and the warming West
An Associated Press story that ran recently above the page one fold in Billings and Butte, Mont., didn’t qualify even as a brief in Baltimore, Md. No surprise, there. More people live in public housing in Baltimore than populate the states of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, combined. But it was big news on the […]
Posted inWotr
Leave only footprints, and turn the darn phone off
Hiking the other day on a national forest trail, we passed a lone woman. Cell phone glued to her ear, chattering away, she stomped by us without the usual trail civilities of at least a smile. Engrossed in the world at her ear, I doubt she even registered the beargrass blooming at her feet. Since […]
Posted inWotr
Dumpster diving for frugality and fun
No, not the kind you might think. I’m not talking about extreme hunter-gatherer dumpster diving, like the Rainbow People do behind Burger King in Boulder, Colo. Mine is sartorially oriented. I’m talking about raiding the “unsalable” clothes bins outside of the Bargain Box and the Senior Center Thrift Store here in Cody, Wyo. I seem […]
Posted inWotr
Subdivision and me
As we signed the papers, I knew I was a hypocrite. But every time we watched the setting sun make the red and beige sandstone glow from within, every time my dog lit out after a jackrabbit it was never going to catch, and every time I found a new potsherd in an unexpected place, […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Hits and missives from Cactus Ed
Writers today: When they’re not updating their blogs or prepping for that tell-all Oprah interview, they’re indecently exposé-ing themselves in another provocative, tragicomic memoir. But there was a time when insight into the person-behind-the-pages was hard to come by, when peering into an author’s inner narrative meant waiting until some enterprising scholar published the author’s […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Diversity, Schmiversity
I’m writing in response to your “Dear Friends” column of June 12. I found your focus on diversity at a recent Saturday morning gathering of staffers and board members to be troubling. I cannot fathom the weak, irrational deduction that goes, “because the (fill in the blank) is diverse, our staff or our movement or […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Keep power generation close to home
Regarding your Aug. 8 article, “Clearing a path for power,” as a veteran of a successful 11-year battle to stop a 345 KV power line from being built across the Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico, I know how complicated and time-consuming stopping these power lines can be. Sadly, most large new power […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Planning lives
I am an Oregon planner. Yes, I repeat: I am an Oregon planner. Despite what you hear about Measure 37, we’re still here. The sky fell and we’re still around picking up the pieces. Life’s never been better. Years ago, some of us said it was time to go out to the public, statewide, and […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
The wilderness has been ‘trammeled’
It appears that just about any place can qualify as wilderness these days if the political will is there to make it so. This certainly is the case for the Jerry Peak area in Idaho. The truly beautiful picture accompanying the Aug. 21 article, “Wilderness cliffhanger,” shows the area as emerald green. Most of the […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Rainbows are people, too
Ranchers have it tough, a huge understatement, but Sharon Salisbury O’Toole’s complaint in her Aug. 7 essay, “There was no green in this Rainbow gathering,” sounds like a selfish indulgence. I was surprised that it was published by HCN. Ranchers enjoy the use of public lands most of the year and make a profit while […]