Brownsville Needs a Real Newspaper

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

Brownsville needs a real local newspaper. The Brownsville Herald is not printed in Brownsville. The Brownsville Herald is staffed by writers from The Valley Morning Star and the Monitor. There are a handful of reporters in Brownsville, but many of the articles printed in the Herald have bylines from Valley Morning Star or Monitor reporters.

The Brownsville Herald used to be printed in Brownsville. I clearly remember seeing reams of newsprint being wheeled in to the warehouse where the printing presses ran. I remember seeing newspaper delivery trucks lined up to receive their copies of the Herald to be distributed to all points of the city. 

I remember walking in to the newspaper offices to drop off samples of my political cartoons when I had hoped to succeed Anton as the editorial cartoonist. I remember the office being abuzz with reporters typing away at their desks and phones ringing — it looked like a real newsroom.

All of that has fallen silent. The large printing presses were sold off and shipped to Mexico long ago. The phones stopped ringing, and the keyboards have stopped clacking. The Herald has been in their new digs in a broom closet inside the Venture X building for a while now. 

If you were to ask most kids, I'm sure they'd tell you the first section of the newspaper they turned to was the comic strip section. Not me. The first section I'd turn to was the editorial page. I remember when the "letters to the editor" section was named the 25 cent forum. As the price of the postage went up, the name changed. I loved reading the letters that were sent in to the editor. I always thought it was interesting the same people would write in time after time. As I got older, the names changed, but the fact that those names were almost always the same ones that got printed didn't. Dagoberto Barrera was always railing about some Republican crisis. Judy "JRod" Rodriguez always had to let us know how she was the best teacher on the planet, Italio Zarate always had something or other to complain about, and of course, Alex Resendez would always chime in to let us all know we were going to hell in a handbasket.

I loved reading Robert Kahn's editorials. I always remember running into him at the Vermillion one evening and stopping him to let him know just how much I enjoyed his columns. He gave me a wry smile and just said, "Give 'em hell, kid," and walked away.

Those days are gone. The Brownsville Herald is Brownsville's no more. The paper is printed up the Valley. How can it be a Brownsville newspaper if it isn't printed here in town? How can it be a Brownsville newspaper if the front page articles are usually written by someone from Harlingen or McAllen? Local blogger Jerry McHale often times calles the Herald "The Dying Daily." 

I have always felt as if the rest of the Rio Grande Valley holds Brownsville in contempt. Most of the news you see on local news stations. KRGV and KGBT always have a McAllen/Mid/Upper Valley lean to their stories. KVEO, which is based in Brownsville, still manages to put out stories that Harlingen and McAllen are interested in. The local Fox affiliate seems to be happy running news stories that interest McAllen and even Laredo before they write anything about Brownsville. If the news media isn't going to cover Brownsville, we should, at the very least, have a decent newspaper that covers the city.

I know the Zavaleta empire tried their hand at broadcasting several years ago by launching a Brownsville-based television station called PAX-20. I guess it didn't do very well, since it isn't around any longer. I'm sure there's someone in town with deep enough pockets to start a legitimate Brownsville-based newspaper. I enjoy writing these columns, but at the end of the day I know i'm not a professional journalist. I know I'm simply pouring out my opinions on a very small corner of the internet. Juan Montoya always jokes he has seven readers, I would argue I have even less than that. 

The largest city in the Rio Grande Valley needs to do better than a broom closet inside the old Edelstein's Furniture warehouse. There are plenty of important things that are happening in Brownsville, and we deserve a full-fledged, legitimate newspaper to keep us in the know.