Riata
Inn
continued from page 17
Mountain views
just outside Marfa
Hwy 90 East • Marfa
Swimming pool
Microwaves/Fridges
Wireless internet
432.729.3800
BEEr GArdEn
& WinE BAr
noon to 2am
live music • pool
412 E Holland Ave
Alpine
432.837.5060
stories) and a Midland business-
man’s plan to pump water from
an underground aquifer on
state-owned land within arid
Presidio County (“Sterry got
wind of it, and we shut them
down,” he said).
“In terms of a newspaper’s
value, it being the Fourth
Estate,” Halpern says. “It’s
watching the three branches of
the government. We become the
citizen’s advocate.”
Last fall, the paper received
some national attention for its
coverage of the local arrest of
actor Randy Quaid and his wife,
Evi, for not paying a bill at an
upscale California ranch hotel.
Halpern gleamed when he
showed me a copy of The
Sentinel’s Oct. 1 front page, which
was devoted to “exclusive” cov-
erage, including an interview
with Evi and a photo of the
sheriff escorting Quaid to a
bank ATM for bail money.
The economic downturn has
made the business tougher in
recent years, Halpern says.
Advertising revenues declined
last year. He has increased the
single-copy price to $1 from 75
cents. He decided not to fill a
position vacated when a
reporter left. He said they are
considering charging online
users for access to The Sentinel’s
Web site. (The International does-
n’t have one.)
A new revenue model is
needed, Halpern says. He won-
ders whether newspapers are
better suited to a nonprofit busi-
ness model and whether they
can charge readers to access
content via handheld readers,
such as Amazon.com’s Kindle
or the new Apple iPad.
“None of us work for free.
We have to find a way, and the
reader needs to understand that
it takes resources to go to city
council meetings and to cover
what we cover,” Halpern says.
“It costs money to put out a
quality product like we do.”
Fort davis
The Jeff Davis Mountain
Dispatch is housed in a little cabin
a block from the Jeff Davis
County Court house. Bob
Dillard is the editor and publish-
er, and he commutes between
Fort Davis and Stanton, where
26
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2010
he owns another weekly.
As the longest-serving news-
paper editor in the region,
Dillard, 64, has a historic per-
spective. A native of the Fort
Worth area, Dillard moved to
Alpine after graduating with a
journalism degree from Baylor.
He and a partner purchased
the Avalanche and then later the
Marfa paper. He eventually sold
these properties to concentrate
on the Jeff Davis Mountain
Dispatch, which he founded with
his wife Christi in the 1980s.
Later, they purchased another
weekly, the Martin County
Messenger in Stanton. Each week,
Dillard commutes some 200
miles each way between Fort
Davis and Stanton to produce
the papers.
Not only is he the long-time
voice of Fort Davis, Dillard also
managed simultaneously to
serve as Jeff Davis county judge
from 1990 to 1994.
In the past, big-city newspa-
pers – El Paso, Fort Worth,
Dallas, even San Angelo – had
regular coverage and distribution
in the Big Bend region. As busi-
ness has deteriorated, however,
these papers have pulled back.
“It’s left us the only game in
town,” Dillard says. “Whether
we are a viable game, I don’t
know.”
Neither of Dillard’s papers
have Web sites, a fact of which he
is well aware, though I didn’t
sense he is in a hurry to launch
one. “We’re all trying to figure
out: How do we make the Web
put some dollars in your pocket?”
His eight-page Fort Davis
paper (circulation 1,175) is a tra-
ditional brew, with hyper-local
news, lengthy letters to the edi-
tor, a church page and humor-
ous columns. Dillard’s occasion-
al commentaries often skewer
politicians in Austin, including
“Governor Good Hair” (Rick
Perry).
“When you are in a small
rural area, there’s a need (for
local news). We try to supply as
much information as possible –
kids’ names, faces, obits. When
you have a baby it’s news. When
you get married it’s news.”
He expects to continue the
long hours – squeezing in vaca-
tion breaks only over long week-
ends – as long as enough readers
remain.
“I don’t plan to retire when
I’m 85. I hope to be working 20
years, 25 years from now. What
could be more fun than going to
a (high school) basketball game,
a football game, stock shows? It’s
life. I live in a great part of the
world. People say ‘Where do you
go on vacation?’ Well, hell, I go
to the front yard sometimes.”
van Horn
Larry Simpson runs the Van
Horn Advocate from the back
room of an office supply store
on Van Horn’s main drag, a few
blocks from Interstate 10, a
stretch of asphalt populated
mostly with motels, gas stations
and a lot of shuttered store
fronts.
Simpson and his wife, Dawn,
a Van Horn native, have owned
the paper since 1975, a period
that has proven to be nothing if
not remarkably static. Today, the
couple prints 1,000 copies of the
six-page broadsheet each week –
the same number they printed
35 years ago.
They have survived by
branching into other businesses,
the office supply and electronics
store and a fixed-based opera-
tion at the local airport, where
Simpson sells fuel to private
pilots. (Simpson, a helicopter
pilot during the Vietnam War,
answers his cell phone “West
Texas Aviation.”)
The Simpsons are the only
employees of the newspaper,
except occasional part-timers.
Dawn writes a regular column,
while Larry covers local govern-
ment meetings and sporting
events, sell ads and designs
pages. Larry says the paper
reflects the couple’s conservative
philosophy, mostly reporting
positive community news.
Larry’s biggest scoop was the
2005 story about Amazon.com
founder Jeff Bezos’ plans to
build a private rocket launch
facility on a Culberson County
ranch between Van Horn and
the Guadalupe Mountains
National Park. After months of
speculation, after quietly pur-
chasing thousands of acres from
local ranchers, Bezos and the
launch manager for his Blue
Origin space venture dropped
into Larry’s office to explain the
project. The project, which
employs only a few locals, has so
far launched only unmanned
test flights but plans manned
flights in the future.
Back to earth, Simpson, 67,