from Cursor, Fall 1999
By JIM PATTEN
/ Head of Journalism Department
We hear a great deal these days about newspapers closing. We don’t hear as much about new ones starting.
But over in Lordsburg, N.M., a new weekly newspaper has hit the streets – with a twist.
The publisher of the newspaper is Jason Watkins. After being rebuffed in his attempt to buy the Lordsburg Liberal, a long-established weekly in the western New Mexico town, Watkins decided to start his own paper and go head-to-head with the Liberal.
So on May 21, The Independent fired its first shot in what must be the smallest town in America to have a newspaper war. With a Page One headline that said “Start the presses,” the first edition included 16 tabloid pages. A color photo graced the cover.
The Independent is the second newspaper Watkins has launched. When he was a sophomore at Lordsburg High School, he started The Maverick, a school newspaper. The paper is still going strong.
The twist here – actually there are two twists – is that Watkins just (Sept. 28) turned 21. He started the paper when he was 20 – too young to buy a beer in a town where as a publisher he’s a community force. The other twist is that Watkins is a student in the journalism department, slaving alongside other beginning reporting students doing obits, weather and cop stories.
His J205/Reporting the News teacher is adjunct instructor RuthAnn Hogue. She said that when she asked members of her class to introduce themselves, Watkins left out the fact that he’s a newspaper publisher.
“He’s doing very well at hiding it,” she said, adding that he’s doing fine in her class.
He commutes from Lordsburg to Tucson, a two-hour drive. There’s his life as a student like all the others, banging away on the department’s rickety computers. Then there’s his life as boss of The Independent, where one of his first moves was to lure the editor of the rival Liberal to work for him.
Editor Brenda Collins (who, by the way, is 29) said Watkins is open minded and eager.
“He always wants to try all these new things,” said Collins, a Lordsburg native who earned a journalism degree from New Mexico State University.
She said it doesn’t bother her to work for someone eight years her junior.
Watkins isn’t sure but he thinks, and probably correctly, that he’s the youngest publisher in the country. He and his newspaper have been featured in New Mexico Magazine, The Albuquerque Journal, the Deming Headlight and Editor & Publisher.
Jason has his own philosophy of journalism. “I believe then [when he started the high school paper] as I do now that I can do anything with honesty and integrity. I secured a three-year job at the local weekly paper, the one that would become my bitter rival.
“There, my teacher was… a raspy-voiced newspaperman who taught me much more than the proper way to curse. He believed, strongly and passionately, that the community press was a fragile instrument.
“He breathed respect and dignity into the pages of his work, and through his example I became a journalist of truth and integrity.”
The Independent claims just 250 subscribers while distributing more than 2,600 copies, a natural strategy for a new paper. It has all the usual community news – obits, school sports, school lunch menus – plus a ton of advertising, including some on Page One.
It even has a web site. You can read The Independent at www.gilanet.com/independent.
Jason Watkins isn’t the sort of person to ask for any favors, but I think when the time comes the faculty just might let him graduate without taking The Tombstone Epitaph.
