With the Kingsville Record and Bishop Newsset to publish its final issue in December, one of the few remaining sources of news in the area — and the only one based in Kingsville — is the South Texan, the weekly newspaper run by Texas A&M University-Kingsville students.
Copies of the newspaper can be found on racks in restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and other spots around town. The pages occasionally contain articles about events in the city and region, though they’re usually tied to a staff member, student or alumnus.
About 1,800 newspapers in the U.S. closed or merged with other papers between 2004 and 2018, according to a study by the University of North Carolina.
READ:The Kingsville Record and Bishop News will publish final edition Dec. 5
As newsrooms downsize or disappear, a trend has emerged of college news organizations — in Oklahoma, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, New Jersey and other states — extending their reach beyond their campuses and into the surrounding communities. They cover local governments, public schools, real estate, politics.
Will the South Texan follow in those student organizations’ footsteps?
Though students and university staff told the Caller-Times they are not opposed to the idea, they have no immediate plans to expand local news coverage.
The benefits of student journalists covering communities are twofold, said Barbara Allen, managing editor of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Students of any major can gain real-world experience and skills in communication and meeting deadlines. And the practice helps alleviate the problem of news deserts.
Almost 200 of the 3,143 counties in the United States do not have a newspaper, the University of North Carolina study showed. Almost 1,500 counties, ranging in size from several hundred residents to more than a million, have only one newspaper, usually a weekly. More than 2,000 have no daily paper.
For residents in thousands of communities, the authors of the study wrote, local newspapers have been the prime, if not sole, source of news and information that affects their everyday lives.
“Is it incumbent upon the students to fill the gap? We at Poynter think it’s incumbent on somebody,” Allen said. “We believe in the power of journalism to solidify democratic communities, but it’s not a mandate, and it’s really hard for students who don’t have a journalism major or a daily paper or a lot of staffers to fill that void.”
The Kingsville Record’s closure comes as the fall semester at the university winds down, with the South Texan staff preparing for its final issue of the year. The newspaper publishes only during the fall and spring semesters.
Faculty adviser Nicole Morris said it’s “pure coincidence” that the South Texan has tried to expand its community footprint in recent months: This semester, it increased its circulation from 1,500 copies to 2,000 — half of which are distributed in the community — to attract more advertisers and students. Next semester, the paper plans to add three more editors to the staff.
The three editors of the South Texan do not plan to become journalists themselves, though editor-in-chief C.R. Neal, a senior, plans to coach future journalists as a high school English teacher.
Neal admitted the Record’s closure puts some pressure on the South Texan.
“I don’t know if that actual pressure is going to translate into anything real, but it certainly does feel like there’s a presence looming,” he said. “Local news is one of the most trusted sources in America … and with that gone, it does feel like there is an absence.”
TAMUK also has a student-run radio station, KTAI-FM, though it does not broadcast news. And there once was a student TV station, Javelina Broadcast Network, that covered some local news, but it shut down several years ago.
Armando Ibanez, an assistant professor of radio-television-film, recently submitted a comprehensive plan to university administrators to revive the TV station and launch a digital filmmaking program. That plan had been in the works since about 2015, Ibanez said, long before the Kingsville Record announced its closure.
If the university approves funding, the station could relaunch in fall 2020 and provide some local news coverage, Ibanez said.
“It would’ve been wonderful had the Kingsville Record continued because that would be a good relationship and a good rapport with (students) on many levels,” Ibanez said. “It’s just sad. Whether we will be able to fill the vacuum at this point, I don’t think so. But I do think that we can begin providing a service to the community.”
It’s not just Kingsville that is affected by the newspaper’s closure. There’s also Bishop, a smaller city about 10 miles away. What was known as the Kingsville Publishing Co. bought the Bishop News in 1964, and the names of the two publications were merged.
The Bishop City Council is planning to publish public notices in the Caller-Times. But councilmember Janie Dominguez said she’s concerned residents who don’t subscribe to the paper will miss the notices.
And without a hyperlocal paper, the community will miss out on more than local news, Dominguez said. Obituaries, wedding announcements and other items of interest will be gone, too. Every year since her husband died in 2012, Dominguez bought a space in the newspaper for his birthday and the anniversary of his death.
The newspaper connected Kingsville and Bishop, Dominguez said, and she worries that connection will be lost.
“I kind of feel like we’re going to be isolated, even though we live close by,” she said.
She said she hopes the university, particularly the South Texan, considers filling the news gap.
“They’re part of our community, and maybe that would also give people that don’t have any association with the college, that would tie in with local news,” she said. “I wish they would. I hate to see the end.”
Vicky Camarillo covers education, immigration and otherissues in South Texas and the rest of the Lone Star State.Support local journalismwith a subscription to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
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