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Show BETSY & ED MARSTON Journalists of, and for, the High Country | By Anne Wilson Paonia, Colorado is, among other things, home to Ed and Betsy Marston, the publisher and editor respectively, of High Country News--that well-known rag published by, and for, "People who Care about the West". The Marstons’ tenure at the helm of HCN has been long - half the duration of the paper's entire existence. During that time, its circulation has increased by 17,000 subscribers. There are an average of 700 hits on its web page each day. News stories are "fed" to 99 other papers across the country. It is more widely read by politicians and government officials from local to federal levels; it is required reading in numerous college courses. It continues to be read by other People who Care about the West...ordinary people who live in it. These are appreciable accomplishments and they do justice, I think, to the fervor and dedication of the paper’s founder, Tom Bell. At first glance, and in ignorance, you might think that High Country News is nothing more than Ed and Betsy Marston. They are intelligent, educated, and erudite about the West. The highly respected newspaper moved to Paonia from Lander, WY when the Marstons were hired to run it ...because they didn't want to re-locate. (No offense to our neighbors up north, but who can blame them?) college. Physics was his meat and potatoes, his stable foundation, his marketable skill. Betsy, on the other hand, called journalism her career from the get-go. She was an English lit. major turned second-generation journalist, (her father wrote for the New York Post) trying her hand in television. It was their previous life that the Marstons first spoke of fervently during our interview. They definitely came of age in the 60’s and know its issues and politics as their own. They met at City College of New York on the staff of the student-run Observation Post. (Let's call that publication a “crusading liberal newspaper” and not use Ed's other descriptive term. . Suffice it to say that folks around these parts still get a bit jumpy when a word has any connotation to red.) Betsy was spending her junior year there, away from the University of Delaware, and Ed was a mentor...of sorts. (Betsy and Ed seem to have differing opinions about what exactly his role was, and I elected not to delve too deeply.) They both made their marks in civil rights during these years, and not on an insignificant level. x with those who have gone before and with the hundreds of writers who contribute to the paper. It may come as a surprise to discover not that they are transplants, but that their interest in the West and its complex issues came about almost by chance. Ed and Betsy are clearly people who have always given a damn. Prior to their baptismal visit to Colorado, it might not have been focused on the environment but they clearly have always been passionate and engaged. They complement each other well in appearance and manner; yet they seem easily individual after long years of marriage. They are an attractive, healthy-looking couple of middle-age and you might not glance twice if you saw them on the street--unless you saw the purpose in their gaze. The “herd” mentality is missing from these two and they seem to illicit a strong response from people, be it positive or otherwise. In this respect they are very much a metaphor of the West. There aren't too many who feel merely indifferent. In some ways the Marstons’ story is much the same as the scores of others who have migrated in the last few decades...first in trickles, now in droves. They are city-born, city-bred (New York, no less), highly educated liberals who gave it all up and moved “out West”. The Marstons rode in on an early wave, before the tide swelled and the swamping by outsiders was something folks here had got used to. They are pragmatic but I think the initial days may have been more difficult than they let on. (It's just a guess but I'll hazard that, despite Betsy's gregarious nature, she did not reveal to this small community of less than 2,000 people that she had been arrested and thrown in jail during a civil rights sit-in in college right off the bat.) Depending upon Paonia's definition, their 25-year residency might classify them as locals by now. The Marstons’ first introduction to Colorado was spending summers there for a number of years—having been introduced to it by friends who had a cabin near Paonia. Visiting first as a couple and later as a family with their two children, they decided, at some point, to take a year off from their established careers and stay through a winter. At that time, real estate was expensive and people in Ouray wouldn't rent to “hippies”, so they chose Paonia. They never left. Finances are a pretty personal matter, but it's clear that there was no trust fund or other major source of income floating Ed and Betsy in 1974 when they metamorphosed from “summer people” (now there is a dyed-in-the-wool Eastern expression...) to what I'll call “real” residents. Ed's beginnings were, in fact, quite humble and while journalism was a passion, it was also an extracurricular activity for him during his undergraduate years of Betsy's afore-mentioned arrest was the product of challenging an “Innkeeper's Law” that permitted restaurant owners to deny service to anyone they didn't The Marstons are quick to share the glory % erties. sak - “like” (we can all guess which ethnic groups were targeted, even though it was 1961). As a result of the trial, the law was found unconstitutional and the case made The New York Times. A diary Betsy kept about the sit-in and surrounding events has been published. Ed, in turn, disclosed the denial to an African-American woman of entry into a sorority through an article in the Observation Post. College officials were infuriated; racism revealed at the supposedly progressive City College made headlines. The event “became tiny compared to the aftermath,” he says. During McCarthy. issues such focusing on graduate school (more Physics), Ed organized people door-to-door for Eugene Betsy, through her job as producer of New Jersey Speaks at WNET, addressed as the women's rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the mafia. Her show Paul Robeson, a black singer and actor who was accused of being a communist, won her an Emmy. We don't concern ourselves as much with civil and social activism in these rural parts and I found it quite refreshing to hear their experiences. In these arenas, as with environmentalism, the Marstons’ involvement was more than superficial. Their first endeavors upon arriving in Paonia didn't last too long. Betsy, as sole proprietor of Paonia Candle Power, made and sold candles. Ed did contract work as a technical writer. Within a year they started to publish a hometown newspaper. Its beginnings are found in nothing more than the Marstons' self-acclaimed boredom. (I can think of far worse reasons to get involved in a thing.) As a result of this condition, and given the limited number of social events in the area, they began attending public meetings. They attended Town and County Commission meetings, Ditch Board meetings, and School Board meetings. You name it and they probably went at one time or another. In the process, they also took issue with the way these meetings were reported to the public. In their words, “the state of local journalism was pretty poor’. They began to care about the issues and viola!, The North Fork Times was born. Twenty-four years later it continues to be a successful hometown newspaper, though now under different ownership. You've got to admire the moxie of two people who not only start a rural newspaper when they are outsiders, but make a success of it. In the process, they came to know the West at a local level..and became hooked on it. ; Betsy and Ed sold the newspaper in 1980, and took a year off to build a house, acting as laborers to their contractor. Then they traveled through Mexico. The journalism bug's bite, however, was tenacious and they decided to start another paper. During the early days of Western Colorado Report they began exchanging ideas with High Country News. ; |