But we are also aware that newspapers – like all businesses – must evolve to survive. A paper is only as successful as its usefulness to readers.
The newspaper industry is changing rapidly. So fast is the pace of technological invention that no one really knows what tomorrow will bring.
Some things, thankfully, are set in stone. Putting out a professional weekly newspaper in print is an exercise in tenaciousness: only accomplished by those of methodical inclination and curious mind, willing and able to tolerate demanding mental – and sometimes physical – exertion and thick-skinned enough to ignore the fault finders, pessimists and naysayers. The process demands commitment, a love of sharing and, perversely, some masochist tendencies!
So we salute everyone, who through their endeavors over five decades, however large or small, has contributed to The Reporter’s continuance in this unique, vital and caring community tucked away in a corner of Western Mexico.
The Reporter’s beginnings: The construction of an essential resource
December 1963 was, as the Four Seasons would later sing, a significant month. Americans were still in shock at the assassination of their charismatic young president just three months after Martin Luther King, Jr. had delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Neil Armstrong’s stroll on the lunar surface was another six and a half years away.
Guadalajara at that time was widely touted as Mexico’s most idyllic city – a welcoming and leisurely metropolis of less than a million souls, whose charming colonial downtown core was easily accessible from the tree-lined suburbs, which to the north-west stretched a mere two blocks past the gleaming new Minerva Glorieta. Gorgeous Lake Chapala was about an hour’s drive away, via a harrowing two-way road that looped around the Hotel Tapatio and petered down from four lanes to two at the airport. No wonder in the years that followed World War II, (and later as disenchantment with U.S. involvement in Vietnam grew) the region became a magnet for Americans looking for alternative lifestyles. Mexico allowed war veterans and retirees to live in a style they could hardly enjoy in the United States: the minimum monthly income requirement for an FM3 resident visa in those days was 3,000 pesos, equivalent to 240 dollars.
Although they had chosen to live in a slow-paced culture where the fates rather than logic often prevailed in everyday matters, the (mostly) Americans who settled in Guadalajara and Chapala in the 1950s and 60s found it hard to shake off their in-built instinct to organize themselves and engage in their favored free-time activity: “do-gooding.” Guadalajara had U.S. diplomatic representation since 1881, the American Society of Jalisco formed in 1945, the Benjamin Franklin Library in 1949, the Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano (ICMN) in 1951, the Lake Chapala Society in 1954, the American School of Guadalajara and American Legion Post Three in 1955 and Chapala Post Seven in 1961. English-speaking church congregations began to spring up, while a club “explosion” saw names such as Duplicate Bridge, Junior League, Shrine Club, Salvation Army, AA, La Luz Guild, appear on the horizon.
U.S. Consul General Adolf Horn found his staff increasingly besieged by Americans asking for information about this burgeoning community and living in Mexico in general. Sadly then, as now, many did not bother to learn Spanish, as Horn, who after retirement went on to become one of Guadalajara’s most prominent businessmen, would frequently implore them to do.
Recognizing a need for a conduit to disseminate an escalating mountain of community information (and for his own agency to reach out to its constituents), Horn approached Robert Thurston, a former journalist and father of three boys from Washington State who worked at the ICMN, a language school formerly sponsored by the State Department. Start a community newspaper, Horn urged Thurston, who initially balked at an idea that ran counter to his “Mexican dream.”
Thurston and his family had come to Mexico in 1956, first to San Miguel de Allende and then settling in Guadalajara. It was his intention to write a book about the customs of Mexico — a labor that was still on the back burner in December 1963 — Thurston had formed a wide circle of acquaintances in Guadalajara’s expat community and he quickly calculated the potential of a English-language periodical. Assembling a team of enthusiastic helpers, and putting his journalistic knowledge to work, he published the first edition of “The Colony Reporter” on Friday, December 19, 1963 for the princely sum of one peso.
“As everyone knows, when three of four Americans get together they start a newspaper,” Thurston declared on the front page of the eight-page debut issue, which also boasted a photograph of U.S. veterans, an article on the local Garden Club, students coming home for the holidays and sweaters being knitted for cold Chapala residents.
Thurston knew that the pats on the back that he received after the first edition appeared were no guarantee for success. What he required was a constant supply of information to publish and – more importantly – advertisements to pay for the enterprise. He also needed to make expats aware that the Reporter existed.
After exiting the printer each week in that first month, bleary-eyed and with ink-stained fingers, Thurston would give away dozens of free copies, even sending his sons out on the streets of Guadalajara to leave issues on the hoods of any parked U.S.-plated cars they saw.
Some businesses were initially cautious about how their customers could increase by specifically targeting English speakers but interest in the Reporter grew quickly and they soon jumped on board, giving the paper a firm financial foundation in a relatively short time. Advertisements began to flow in from restaurants, hotels, Realtors, financial institutions, travel agents, movers, language schools, veterinarians, insurance agents, furniture makers, bakers, butchers and candlestick makers – many of them remaining loyal to the paper for years to come, and to this day. A classified section – absent from the first edition – was soon up and running.
As the 1960s progressed, new arrivals, most of them retired, were enticed to the area by a slew of books and articles appearing in U.S. magazines describing the ease of living comfortably in Mexico on a small budget. The Reporter did its best to perpetuate this theory.
Ran some of the CR headlines at the time: “$350 for a couple. Enough?” “She lives here nicely for $250.” “On $350 a month. It’s easy here, couple says.”
Was it true? For a few people, yes. With decent apartments renting from as little as 80 dollars a month and three- and four-bedroom homes in classy Guadalajara neighborhoods such as Providencia, Colonia Seattle and Ciudad del Sol selling for between 40,000 and 60,000 dollars (properties were even cheaper at the lake), the expat community mushroomed like never before. But many retirees were to find out that while living on 250 dollars a month was possible, it came with a caveat: cheap often meant rudimentary – fundamentals taken for granted at home (reliable plumbing systems, etc.) were not always guaranteed.
Self-annointed (and some genuinely) creative types seemed to be drawn to Mexico at that time, so finding writers willing to bash out copy for the Reporter was not a major headache, even if the lack of the basic trappings required for journalism – such as telephones – made information gathering an exhausting task.
Among the CR stalwarts in those days were Nat Coleman, “an elegantly dressed old-school gentleman” who showed up at the Reporter office when the paper was barely two months old with a story on Mexican folklore – he was also one of the first reporters to write extensively about the Huichol Indians of Jalisco – and Jack McDonald a crusty former San Francisco sports scribe who penned dozens of articles on travel, history and culture in Mexico over a ten-year span. His persona was aptly summed up by the small photo that accompanied his every story: a stony stare, with a fat cigar protruding from his mouth.
Another popular contributor was Selena Royle, who Thurston once described as “an efficiency expert without a single method,” and “a slightly legal Robin Hood, a big-hearted, warm and wonderful woman – completely indispensable.” Royle went on to share her vast knowledge of Mexico – and Guadalajara in particular – in several editions of a guide book: “Guadalajara, as I know it ... live it ... love it.”
Thurston also cast an observant eye on Mexican culture that he adeptly wove into a weekly column, Potpourri, illustrated by easy-on-the-eye cartoons from another staffer, Mark Messenger. The columns were usually light-hearted but often contained a useful message or lesson for foreigners new to the country and trying to come to grips with the culture, language or customs.
The Reporter’s close relationship with the U.S. Consulate was evident in those early years. Liberal lifestyles in the United States were given short shrift by Mexican authorities and as the decade turned the CR would publish stories on the dire penalties of being caught with marijuana and other illegal substances. Then, as is sometimes the case now, important messages from the U.S. government could be relayed to the community via the Reporter’s pages.
Believing his readers to be content in their Mexican “bubble,” Thurston deliberately shied away from current affairs, and was perfectly happy to publish a chatty, gossipy weekly journal reliant on expat social happenings and travel, cultural, historical and arts features, while ignoring the major hard news stories of the day. This innocent approach included sharing liberal amounts of personal information, even publishing readers’ “comings and goings” from their local homes – a definite “no-go” in today’s security conscious world.
In 1973, on the occasion of the Reporter’s 10th anniversary, Thurston clarified his position in print, perhaps to suppress some criticism: “The Reporter is not, nor has it ever been, a ‘news’ paper. It has been, and still is, a bulletin board, a recorder of local statistics, a reluctant noter of cocktail parties, an interpreter of the Mexican scene and a credit giver. When a colony group built a hospital, sheltered the orphans, clothed the old, fed the hungry, where could its members read in solid and lasting print that they had successfully accomplished such good works? Certainly not in the unimpressed and sensitive Mexican press. But they could find it in the Reporter.”
So when Mexican troops fired on students in the capital’s Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, killing hundreds, The Reporter remained silent. Given that U.S. newspapers were hard to come by, and the only local Spanish-language periodical of note – El Informador, a conservative chronicler of national and international events that steadfastly adhered to the government line – hardly reported the incident, many expats remained totally in the dark about the massacre.
Since many of the new immigrants were enjoying an indulgent lifestyle (maids and gardeners they could scarcely afford at home), Thurston was reluctant to delve too deeply into Mexico’s economic travails. In fairness, the 1960s were a settled time for the Mexican economy. Expats felt secure with an exchange rate that remained stable at around 12.50 pesos to the dollar; they kept dollar bank accounts and with local English-language advisors such as Allen W. Lloyd to keep them informed, grey economic clouds were usually ignored. As well as its protected economy (any new imported foods were treated like pirates’ booty), the country’s political system was tightly controlled by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Protest was minimal and usually ruthlessly repressed. The city’s CIA-backed private Autonomous University of Guadalajara (UAG) had started a medical degree program in English that drew hundreds of Americans rejected at U.S. schools. The left-leaning students of Mexico may have been in revolt but the CR faithfully stuck to its guns and reported on this new intake of expats and their bored wives (yes, prior to the Internet, some young people still read newspapers!).
Thurston may have regarded politics as nonessential content but occasionally reported news that he knew would not ruffle any feathers. This included the fortunes of Mexico’s largest lake.
“Lake Chapala Waters Rising” ran a one-column headline on September 25, 1971 during one of the heaviest rainy seasons on record. The brief four-paragraph article noted that Lake Chapala was “rising at a rate of about three centimeters a day” and that “Chapala streets were covered with water.” A previous occurrence had taken place in 1967, the story said. Interestingly, the photograph on the front page was not of Chapala streets under water, but of the Juanacatlan Falls on the (now polluted) Santiago River outside Guadalajara. “A thrilling sight,” noted the caption, which gave directions how to get to the site. The image was indeed striking but perhaps not the most newsworthy choice given that families in Chapala were bailing water from their homes.
Although the expatriate community in Guadalajara far outnumbered its Lake Chapala counterpart in those days, the north shore was becoming increasingly popular. Since the days of dictator Porfirio Diaz, Chapala had always been a favored weekend getaway for Tapatios and their families, who would turn up in the hundreds to bathe in the pristine waters of the lake. In the late 1950s and early 60s, Ajijic was unrecognizable from its sanitized modern-day self: the pueblo’s foreigners lived side by side with the locals and comprised a blend of bohemian wannabe artists and writers, some who planned to pen the next “Great American Novel.” Acclaimed benefactress Neill James had moved to the area back in 1945 and set about a life of philanthropy, starting libraries, educating kids and teaching them art. Lakeside Little Theater’s first production was in 1965 – a musical written and directed by Betty Kuzell entitled “From Kokomo to Mexico,” staged in the old railway station. Musical groups weren’t far behind. Modern-day lakeside was emerging.
One visitor to the area was Allyn Hunt, an artist and writer brought up on the plains of Nebraska who moved to Los Angeles as a teen. A frequent inhabitant of Tijuana’s bars and aficionado of Baja’s beaches and bullfights, he connected with Mexico’s contradictory identities, and in doing so found a great source of material for his prose.
Hunt penned a few articles for The Reporter in the late 1960s before heading back to New York with his wife Beverly to kick-start his writing career. A stint at the iconic Village Voice gave him a thirst for journalism but the lure of Mexico was strong. After a couple of years he had returned to the shores of Lake Chapala, where he began to write feature articles on a regular basis for The Reporter, while Beverly churned out a new column covering local happenings: “Laguna Chapalac,” an offshoot of the first dedicated column in the area called “Lakeside Look.”
By 1975 Thurston’s sons had fled the nest; his youngest was safely enrolled at Stanford University. It was time, he decided, for him and his wife Jean to head back to the U.S. west coast.
For Hunt, whose interest in Mexico went well beyond the day-to-day activities of retired expatriates, the opportunity arose to take over a newspaper and mould it into a serious journal that reflected many aspects of the nation.
Early in 1975, Thurston accepted an offer to buy the paper and by April Hunt was installed in the editor’s chair at the Reporter’s office on Calle Lopez Cotilla.
Once in command, Hunt drew up a plan to gradually change the parochial image of the paper while maintaining its essential community character. The rejig came sooner rather than later, however, as Mexico, under the guidance of an erratic populist president, lurched into a full-blown economic crisis.
(Thurston and his wife returned to Oregon, where he took a post teaching Spanish at the Linn-Benton Community College in Albany. He passed away at the age of 84 in November 1998.)
This is the first part of a three-part series. Part II, describing how The Reporter covered two decades of turmoil in Mexico, beginning and ending with the devaluations of 1976 and 1994, will appear in January 2014, once the holiday season has concluded.