Twice-weekly paper in Uvalde found its niche in what rural journalism can provide: context, comfort and community

The newsroom of the Uvalde Leader-News; the city has 15,000 people and Uvalde County has 25,000. (The New Yorker)

How does a twice-weekly newspaper handle a tragic evil of national proportions that left one of its reporters with a dead child? By providing “context, a source of understanding, and hand-holding, and healing,” Craig Garnett, owner and publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News, told New Yorker contributing writer Rachel Monroe, who covers Texas and the Southwest for the magazine.

When Monroe arrived at the Leader-News office Wednesday, the day after 19 students and two teachers died in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, the staff of 10 "had recently received confirmation that [receptionist-turned-reporter] Kimberly Rubio’s daughter, Lexi, was among the dead," Monroe reports. "The newsroom atmosphere was stricken, and the office phone didn’t stop ringing; the paper was getting calls from media around the world, seeking comment, insight, images. The issue had to go to print in a few hours."

Front page of the May 25 edition

Garnett told Monroe the next day, “I was thinking about the other news outlets being able to beat us in every way. They have resources. They don’t mind asking the hard questions, even if it offends you, and we did. Community journalism is a different animal.” But the paper could provide context, understanding, comfort, and a sense of community.

General Manager-Photographer Pete Luna said he told Garnett that he didn't want the shooter's picture published. Done. "The other looming question was what would go on the front page," Monroe writes. Garnett said, “I wanted to run a traditional front page—six-column picture, seventy-two-point headline,” but there were other ideas. "Luna had been picturing a blank page—no photo, just empty space," Monroe reports. "Staff Writer Melissa Federspill suggested blacking out the entire front page. The idea appealed to Luna and Garcia," and that's what they did. “It’s how we feel right now,” Luna said.

Monroe writes, "Black stood for grief, but also privacy—the things the community was holding back, keeping for itself." Garnett told her, “You’ve got so many people knocking on your door, calling you. And I get that—that’s fine, they have a job to do. But they’ll be gone. We just thought, This is how we’re going to hold this.”

Craig Garnett

Garnett "grew up in a small town in southwest Oklahoma," Monroe reports. "As a teen-ager, he got hired to paint the local newspaper’s office. He went on to work for papers in Fort Worth and Kansas City, but he always longed to return to a small town like the one where he grew up. Forty years ago, he moved to Uvalde to become general manager of the Leader-News, which has a wall full of awards and a storied history." Garnett told Monroe, “It’s a small town, but it has this feeling of—a bit of a sophisticated interest in a bigger world, and that appealed to me.”

Monroe concludes, "Leader-News staffers are gathering themselves for what they’ll have to cover next: more press conferences, funerals, and the long aftermath of what Luna called the worst day of his life. Garnett said that Rubio had texted earlier that day to ask if she could write her daughter’s obituary for the paper."

“She said, ‘Can I have two pictures?’ And I said, ‘You can have a full page.’ ”