It was a rough, painful week in mid June. The Big Bend Sentinel was laid out and ready to go with an amazing front-page story by Sam Karas on eminent domain’s impact on families with the creation of Big Bend National Park. A giant, intriguing historical photo sat below the big bold headline. But I had to tell the publisher, Roger Black, “We can’t print.”
Always optimistic, he replied, “Why? We have to.” However, logistically, and financially, there was no way to do it. We were behind on paying the printing press and the distribution team, and there would be no way to pay the huge postage bill due the day of mailing.
“I’ll find the money,” the publisher said. He never did. Just as all eyes turned to the paper to find out what was happening with federal construction, we had to stop printing to stay solvent.
I had repeatedly relayed the warning signs starting in February. Advertising revenue was down, while printing and postage costs were up. For every $1 paper we printed, we were losing $3. The only positive sign was an increase in subscriptions, likely from border wall coverage. A one-time grant kept us alive March through April. Promises from the publisher to raise money were repeated weekly, with no success.
Meanwhile, I had my hands full. Changes in staff left me handling most of the writing and editing, tracking advertising, billing advertisers, and trying to get a grip on bookkeeping, all while the border wall coverage was ramping up. I was working all day, seven days a week. Without Ariele Gentiles, my steadfast copy editor, I would have collapsed, or run away. Kate Bubacz, who will be leading the new nonprofit heading The Big Bend Sentinel, was freelancing, but wasn’t in full swing to help. Sam Karas had committed to only covering the border wall after her departure as a full-time staff member in March, unable to work full-time with missed payroll. But she marched on covering the wall and broke several news stories. Jennifer Pittinger arrived in the spring to help with administrative tasks, but she was only part-time and still learning the ropes.
Amidst all this, the publisher fell very ill. The only thing keeping the team going with the online version was the notion that we didn’t want to kill a 100-year-old newspaper. I kept thinking of David Byrne’s Talking Heads line: “Well, how did I get here?”
The foundation begins to suffer
A year ago, we were meeting our deadlines, doing investigative pieces and longer-form features. Former publishers Maisie Crow and Max Kabat had created a solid foundation for the newspaper. They worked tirelessly (and didn’t pay themselves) when they bought The Big Bend Sentinel from Robert and Rosario Halpern, who had run the publication for decades. They set up an innovative model of having their Sentinel coffeeshop help fund the newspaper. It was enough to cover some of the expenses. Crow was the top editor and took amazing photographs. Kabat made the ask to advertisers on an ongoing basis and immersed himself in networking with other publishers. The newspaper was breaking even, employing three full-time people and several part-timers.
With a change in life — a young toddler — and desire to move and focus on other career priorities, the couple decided to sell the newspaper last fall. At the same time, we lost our top-notch reporter, Mary Cantrell, who took a job at Marfa Public Radio. But we were in a rhythm, with me trying my best to be a leader and making sure we had a solid product each week. We felt it was possible for someone to come along and help fundraise to expand our coverage and staff.
Roger Black had toyed with the idea of purchasing the paper for more than a year. An accomplished creative director at national newspapers and magazines, he seemed equipped to shepherd the paper in the future. He also was equipped with a lot of promises — a nonprofit board ready to fundraise, big-time initial investors, and raises ahead for staffers. When he took the helm after his purchase, he grimly announced that his biggest investor had pulled out. It wasn’t a good sign.
It became immediately clear to me that without an initial investment we were going nowhere new. Black totally transformed the look of the paper with new fonts, changes in the standard layout and what he viewed as a cleaner logo. Although, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me we needed to “bring back the horse” that was part of the masthead logo that Roger had deleted, well, I could retire.
The community reaction to the new design was mixed — some appreciating the new look, others complaining it looked disastrous. My overall sense was that the majority of people would prefer to have the old Big Bend Sentinel back. Amidst all the strife, our office manager Mary Etherington left, unhappy with the workplace environment. No one was spending the time needed to sell ads, resulting in declining ad revenue.
With financial pressures mounting, the design element also began to chip away at any chance for success at the newspaper. Black and his intern began spending an inordinate amount of time laying out the paper. I once witnessed him spending six hours on a front page. He routinely looked at a page design — which I thought looked pretty good — only to declare it all wrong, at which point he would redo the entire page. The result was the printing press in Monahans waiting for us to finish at 10:30 p.m., when our deadline was 4 p.m. Mistakes, even big ones on the front page, were common as the chaotic system of layout caused the intern to send previous, uncorrected versions of pages to the printer. Black and I moved the deadline for stories to 5 p.m. on Mondays to accommodate the lengthy design process.
For Sam Karas, that deadline was absurd. Why demand all stories for a Thursday paper on Mondays? Previously, reporters would file all stories by Tuesday evening, with latitude given for some writing to continue through noon on Wednesday. Karas, who like all of us, was fed up with a low salary, missed payrolls and the new deadlines, announced she was leaving the newspaper — well, kind of. As the border wall issue erupted, she said she would only work on wall coverage for us. She was my pillar, a partner and friend for my life at the newspaper, but I understood her decision. The wall is an existential threat to her love of the border and her dreams to remain here for life, so why get mired in the turmoils at the paper that had nothing to do with reporting? Besides, it worked out rather well in our work being acknowledged as the best coverage of the issue out there.
The great reporting and writing was still in place, and our border wall coverage was lauded, but what the newspaper needed was a leader that concentrated solely on fundraising, advertising, and applying for grants. Black did invest a lot of his own money and raised a few thousand dollars. He sought pro bono help from professionals he knew in the industry, but that assistance often fizzled out. He believed in his vision for a robust community newspaper that stood out from the crowd, and he devoted an immense amount of time and energy trying to fulfill that vision — just not always time spent in the right places.
Back to the dark day in June when the paper failed to reach mailboxes and newsstands. By coincidence, Bubacz reached out to Crow, requesting comment about the changes at the paper for an upcoming piece about the newspaper’s centennial anniversary. Crow burst into tears. She and Kabat were extremely upset that their years of care for The Big Bend Sentinel came to this, just nine months after the sale. All of this came spilling out as Crow confided in Bubacz. The two shared numerous mutual friends from their years in New York, and had been intending to meet for coffee in Marfa for months.
Bubacz, Crow and Kabat began planning, looking for a way to save the paper. With Black in default on his purchase contract, Crow and Kabat worked for weeks to reclaim all the newspaper assets. They still couldn’t own or be involved in the day-to-day management of the paper. The better path would be to build a new nonprofit entity, led by Bubacz, who has journalism experience with the Wall Street Journal and ABC News, and an independent board of directors, to publish the paper.
It wasn’t an easy task, though, and has taken months to accomplish. Meanwhile, the news cycle was relentless as border wall contractors showed up. By going online-only, we lost some advertisers and subscribers, so the paper has limped along. By July, I was exhausted and going through waves of sadness about all the people who wanted to hold a physical newspaper in their hands each week.
Earlier merchandise branded with “Print is Not Dead” mocked me. With each phone call or email I sent to confused subscribers, I recalled the image of our former office manager, Mary Etherington, who set a small stack of papers outside our office, weighed down by a big rock, and they faithfully left their $1. However, that time was needed for us to set up a new foundation for success, which is where we are with this edition of the paper.
While rumours abound that none of us were getting paid by the summer, it’s only partially true. We did manage to pay ourselves something, although often woefully less than our former payroll. I had to quash daydreams of walking away and suffered from nightmares over work situations that didn’t exist.
With that, I want to offer sincere thanks for everyone who stuck with us. It’s time to look ahead, and I believe we have a great team on our new board of directors that can help us succeed and fulfill the dream of informing the public and telling the amazing stories of the Big Bend through The Big Bend Sentinel — not to mention the cowboy and horse are back.
