TRI-COUNTY — Lowe’s Markets, the grocery chain with stores in Marfa, Fort Davis, Alpine and Presidio, pulled The Big Bend Sentinel newspaper out of all its area stores around January 17. Executives with the company are not commenting on the reason for the move.
The Littlefield, Texas, based chain had sold The Sentinel (and The International in Presidio) as a continuation of Porter’s carrying the newspapers. Lowe’s Markets — the chain that bought Porter’s — continued to welcome the newspapers for sale in their stores. Although Lowe’s representatives were responsive to The Sentinel inquiries during the past three-plus weeks, in the end, they declined to comment. A company executive told The Sentinel Tuesday that the chain would not bring back the newspapers to their stores any time soon.
The Sentinel ran a story on July 11 about shoppers alleging they were getting charged more than items were marked. The company commented extensively for the story, quickly agreed to look into the allegations and did an audit of the Marfa store.
Lowe’s Chief Operating Officer Alan Buxkemper told The Sentinel at the time that the company works “super hard to make sure that [they] have fair, adequate and accurate pricing,” but that an audit was ordered in light of the complaints. “If there’s a specific reason, my auditors will know, ‘Okay, this is what happened.’ And then we can put a plan together to fix whatever happened,” Buxkemper said.
Then a week later, Lowe’s Markets declined to comment on the results of the audit.
A January 16 Sentinel story profiled an Alpine couple starting a home-delivery service for groceries from H-E-B, Sam’s Club and Walmart in Odessa. The story noted that they “were frustrated by the high prices, low quality and limited options that plague local supermarkets.”
“It’s certainly disappointing,” said Rob D’Amico, managing editor of The Sentinel. “It’s not about money from newspaper sales. It’s about community. The idea is that when you go into your local grocery store in any small town across Texas, you should see the front pages of your local newspapers on the racks, even if the headlines are uncomfortable for some people.”