Dying newspaper is given new life
KINGSVILLE — When the news broke in late November that the 113-year-old Kingsville Record was sinking in red ink and would soon fold, some in this proud, close-knit South Texas city reacted with grief and anger.
“I think it’s a damned shame and an embarrassment. It’s sad for our community,” exclaimed Dianne Leubert, a member of the City Commission. “It’s not just the paper. It’s your lifeline. It’s your information. It’s something as simple as your school kid winning an award or an obituary.”
Readers in Bishop, just north of Kingsville, reacted just as darkly.
“I’m heartbroken. I was born and raised in Kingsville, and I grew up with that paper,” Bishop Mayor Tem Miller said. “Anytime we had something major on our agenda, they were here to cover it. They did a good job, and it was never negative.”
It appeared certain that Kingsville’s community voice and watchdog would fall silent — until an improbable, last-minute rescue.
‘No paper?’
Established as the Gulf Coast Record in 1906, three years after Kingsville was founded, the paper had survived more than a century of ups and downs, including the Great Depression, the 1924 fire that destroyed its Sixth Street plant, the boom
times after World War II and the hard times over the past decade.
As ad sales and subscriptions dipped, the paper went from two editions a week to one earlier this year. It also squeezed the staff and cut newsprint, responses to a malaise afflicting newspapers large and small.
Owned since 1953 by the nearby King Ranch, the Record hung in there until the losses were untenable. On Nov. 21, in a letter to readers, publisher Chris Maher announced that the paper would close after the Dec. 5 edition.
“Over the next two weeks, our incredible staff has committed to doing what you would expect — telling the story of this community,” he wrote, inviting readers to share their thoughts about the end of their hometown newspaper.
Many did, recalling the Record as both a comfortable old friend and a reliable source of information.
“Kingsville with no paper? Not even one Kingsville Record a week?” wrote one reader, adding, with just a touch of hyperbole, “This move could contribute to the death of this small town. “
Another quoted Thomas Jefferson: “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”
Surrounded on all sides by the vast King Ranch, Kingsville owes both its name and its existence to that fabled ranching empire.
Around 1900, Henrietta King, widow of ranch founder Capt. Richard King, designated a large tract of the ranch for sale to encourage the construction of a rail line to Brownsville. Included was land for a new town 3 miles west of the ranch headquarters.
A post office was established there in 1904, the same year the first train came through. Many of the first businesses, including a motel, ice plant, water works and cotton gin, were built by the King Ranch. By 1912, about 4,000 people lived there.
More than a century later, the 825,000-acre ranch — which is larger than Rhode Island — still plays a big role in local affairs. The most important social event of the year is the Ranch Hand Weekend in November. Folks can eat a cowboy breakfast at the ranch, attend a ranch rodeo, listen to country music and take part in other events.
Although the railroad faded decades ago, Kingsville has thrived. Today it is a tidy, bustling city of about 26,000 residents with a four-year college and a military base.
More than 200 businesses are members of the chamber of commerce, and the century-old downtown along Kleberg Avenue remains vibrant.
At Harrel’s Kingsville Pharmacy, founded in 1916, families still patronize an old-time soda fountain where a milkshake and hamburger each go for $2.25.
Yet the Kingsville Record has only 800 subscribers.
‘News desert’
Seen from afar, the feared closure of the small weekly was nothing remarkable.
In the last three years, about 20 Texas newspapers have gone out of business, according to the Texas Press Association. In South Texas, they included the Bandera County Courier, the Gonzales Cannon and the Rockport Coastal Bend Herald. An additional 10 papers were absorbed in mergers with other publications.
On the national level, the situation is even more grim and has given rise to the term “news desert” to describe communities without local news coverage.
“Over the past 15 years, we’ve lost 2,100 newspapers in the U.S — a fourth — including 70 dailies and the rest nondailies,” wrote Penelope Abernathy, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, who last year published a major study of the phenomenon.
“Communities that lost newspapers tended to be much poorer and older, suggesting that the forprofit model for newspapers in economically struggling areas has collapsed,” she said.
In that time, almost 200 newspapers have closed in Texas, leaving 22 counties without a paper, according to the study, titled “The Expanding News Desert.”
But amid all the gnashing of teeth in Kingsville, things were happening behind the scenes. As it turned out, the Kingsville Record had not breathed its last. ‘Nothing is off-limits’
“It took me by surprise. I’ve been mayor for 15 years, and that’s the worst thing that’s happened,” said Kingsville Mayor Sam Fugate, 65. “I got mad. I started making phone calls. I would call anyone who wanted to listen to me.”
On Dec. 5, instead of saying goodbye with its final edition, the Record announced that it would live on under new ownership.
Its assets would be acquired by the Kingsville Area Industrial Development Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to attract and retain jobs in South Texas.
A coalition of other community leaders, including Robert Underbrink, CEO of the King Ranch; Fugate; Mark Hussey, president of Texas A&M University-Kingsville; Manny Salazar, CEO of the Kingsville Chamber of Commerce; and Brad Womack, president of the Kleberg Bank, had come up with a plan to keep the paper alive.
Some promised financial backing, others in-kind support, and others commitments to encourage more advertising and subscription sales.
Womack, 40, chairman of the nonprofit foundation, feared that Kingsville losing its only paper would “delegitimize” the community in the eyes of outsiders.
“We want new businesses and people to move here. If we don’t have a newspaper, it’s a pretty big thing,” he said.
In a critical move, he said, the foundation hired Tim Acosta, a former Record reporter and editor, to run it.
“We have a three-person board, and they have given me the ability to support him in what he needs to do,” Womack said, promising that there would be no meddling in the newsroom.
“We have vowed we’re not making newspaper decisions. We’re not qualified to do so. The mission is for him to do the right thing. Nothing is off-limits,” he added.
In order to reduce overhead, Womack said, “filler content” possibly including the TV guide, comics and opinion page would be eliminated. The focus will be on local news coverage.
He singled out Underbrink, the King Ranch leader, for his critical role in the rescue.
“If he had not been open to this wild idea, it would not be possible. He could have just walked away,” he added.
Present for Kingsville
Fugate said the Record’s brush with extinction was “an eye-opener” for Kingsville.
“We’re not going to let this fail. The community will step up,” he said.
Acosta, 37, graduated from A&M-Kingsville, worked for the Record from 2011 to 2017 and still lives in the town. He said he could not pass up the challenge.
“For me, it’s an opportunity to get this newspaper back on its feet for the people of this town,” he said. “We’ve got some capital. There’s a lot of goodwill now. But it’s on us to respond and live up to the community’s expectations.”
Mike Hodges, president of the Texas Press Association, said the rescue of a failing weekly, though not unprecedented, is certainly unusual. In the Record’s case, he said, it might well succeed.
“This is a big market. It’s 26,000 people with a college, a naval air station and a tourist attraction in the King Ranch. It’s inconceivable that a newspaper of that size would not survive. I think the local business community felt the same way,” he said.
But for the Record to thrive, Hodges said, it must maintain its editorial independence. The paper has a three-person news staff and eight employees in all.
“The key is a guy named Tim Acosta. He’s a good journalist. I think if they couldn’t get him, it might have fallen through,” Hodges said.
For Clyde Allen, 86, a lifelong reader whose family’s furniture company advertised in the Record for more than 90 years, the lastminute reprieve was sweet news.
“It was part of my everyday life, getting up in the morning, having coffee, having the Kingsville paper. And we knew all the newspaper people. They fit in, just like the banker or the mortician in a small community,” he said.
“I’m just delighted that I can still know who died by reading the obituaries. It’s a nice Christmas present for the town.”