Dear Friends

Look for local experts At our invitation, writer Cate Gilles stopped in for lunch and an informal seminar about reporting on Indian reservations. Cate wrote for the Navajo-Hopi Observer and the Navajo Times – and freelanced for High Country News – before heading to the University of Colorado in Boulder as a Ted Scripps Fellow […]

Welcome, Keri New intern Keri Watson arrived at High Country News on Paonia’s first sunny day in what seemed like weeks. She’d just spent time shepherding her German in-laws around Salt Lake City, the city where she was born and where she worked as a camera operator at KUED-TV while also doing research for a […]

30 for $30 In 1992, High Country News raised the price of a personal subscription from $24 a year to $28. Since then, we have held the price line. Now we find ourselves in the position of the rancher who was losing $50 on every calf he sold. He decided to lick his problem by […]

Welcome, Chris Wehner High Country News welcomes Chris Wehner, who will manage the newspaper’s home on the World Wide Web. Originally from Rockford, Ill., outside of Chicago, Chris lives an hour’s drive from Paonia in Grand Junction, Colo., with his wife, Paula, and their blended family of five children. He’ll split his time between working […]

Out of the courts Robert Amon, the grandfather of the Earth First! forest protests at Idaho’s Cove-Mallard (HCN, 9/2/96), wrote us recently to share his good news. For the first time in more than five years, he tells us, he is legally untangled. The last lawsuit against him was dropped by Highland Enterprises, an Idaho […]

Report from the trash patrol A Saturday morning spent cleaning up two miles of State Highway 133 created a variety of reactions among the participants. Some of us came away satisfied. All of us came away hot and dirty. But Betsy Offermann came away determined: “The next time I see someone litter, I’m going to […]

Almost fooled by a fax We received a confusing message by fax machine recently from promoters of something called The National Media Guide in Altamonte Springs, Fla. At first, it seemed a no-brainer: We sign our name, we get a “complimentary copy” if we “rush” back a reply. Then, we noticed an odd line at […]

Goodbye, Linda For a decade, Associate Publisher Linda Bacigalupi – often called Linda B, for obvious reasons – has been the administrative heart of High Country News, ensuring that we operated in ways that were orderly, efficient and, most of all, humane. Nonprofits tend to chew up their staffs, and Linda did her best to […]

A very good year The board of directors of the High Country Foundation met in St. George, Utah, on Jan. 23 to review 1998’s circulation and financial results and to consider the 1999 budget proposed by the staff. The past year was better than expected. HCN’s circulation grew by 4 percent, ending the year at […]

Congratulations Congratulations to Ed and Martha Quillen, who will mark the fifth anniversary of their monthly magazine, Colorado Central, on Feb. 13, at Daylight Donuts, at Third and F in downtown Salida. Everyone who has written for the magazine in the last year or so, the Quillens say, is invited. They also say that less […]

Tony the workhorse This paper depends on its readers and financial supporters, but above all it depends on people who hold down demanding full-time jobs and yet still find time to do little things, like writing huge chunks of High Country News. Over the years, reporter Tony Davis has been first among this group of […]

First snow It was like getting hit in the face with a cream pie: A wet snow dumped on much of western Colorado early this month. Trees, still laden with leaves, bent low, some breaking, some perilously stretching power lines, and until the mist cleared, all seemed heavy and ominous. Then the sun chased the […]

Heading for the highway High Country News has adopted a three-mile stretch of state Highway 133 just outside of Paonia, and on Saturday morning, Nov. 21, volunteers from staff plan to pound the shoulders, picking up debris. A Sept. 23 story in the Salt Lake Tribune gave some of us pause, however. It was headlined: […]

Bright eyes When photographer Paul Bousquet of Boulder, Colo., told us he’d be spending time in our valley taking pictures of organic vegetable farms for an upcoming book, we decided to snag him for a lunchtime seminar. Gathered in our production room, we picked his brain about taking better photos of new interns and other […]

It’s in the mail Forgive us if we sound dramatic. But this fall, as every fall, subscribers will make a life or death decision about High Country News. The decision will be whether to contribute to the paper’s Research Fund. The letter asking for your support will tell you that without the Research Fund, there […]

Here comes camouflage Some of the men you see walking down the streets of this town of 1,400 look a mite peculiar these days. Their faces are deliberately dirty and they’re wearing camouflage. It’s the first clue that summer is close to over and fall is moving in fast. The earliest hunters to appear are […]

Visitors of late summer Chip Blake, managing editor of Orion magazine, stopped by after taking part in a floating reunion of river guides at Cataract Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. Chip, who has been with the Massachusetts-based quarterly for six years, shared his expertise about reaching potential new readers. In a nutshell, Chip says, anything […]

A subscription of his own After several years on HCN’s circulation desk, staffer Kathy Martinez is hard to surprise. But even she was taken aback when a Kansas mail carrier called to subscribe because the people who used to take High Country News moved off his route. “I didn’t get a chance to finish that […]