EXTRA! HERALD, CITY'S PAPER OF RECORD, MOVING OUT

By Juan Montoya
The site that at one time housed the Brownsville Herald, its newsroom, its presses, and loading docks has now become part of Cameron County facilities.

This morning, workers were painting over the Herald logos and sprucing up the place after the Herald, owned by AIM Media, and its staff was moved out shortly before New Year's Day.

Many subscribers who used to pay monthly were met by closed doors and a sign on the door (in Spanish and English) announcing the move and giving them a telephone number where they could call (956) 430-6200.

The sign on the door said the paper has moved to the Venture X Office Complex at 222 N. Expressway 77/83.

Cameron County had been negotiating with the newspaper for the purchase of the building and the land for future expansion. A county source said that the price negotiated was below market value (around $600,000) and that some uses would not be allowed because of possible contamination from the printing process over the years. Before the staff moved, AIM rented the building until they could get new accommodations, making the county a little extra on top of the cut-rate price for the land.

The newspaper occupied the building continuously since 1965 and was the newspaper of record in the city.

Readers were treated to investigative reports on such varied topics as the Mark Kilroy Satanic murders, the Manpower scandal, the Joey Fisher curandera murder for hire, and the various sins and peccadilloes of elected officials. The late Ray Ramon used to get pillaged almost daily when he was a county judge at the same time that Joe Rivera was getting his start as a county clerk and Eddie Lucio Jr. – now a state senator – was then a county treasurer and later a county commissioner.

The saga of former sheriff Conrado Cantu and his conviction for aiding drug runners, the infamous Bridge to Nowhere that resulted in $21 million spent by the port of Brownsville with nothing to show for it, the burning down of the Matamoros city hall and jail, and the current insecurity along the border and in northern Mexico caused by the drug cartels are stories that were generated here. And Sam Houston Johnson, the brother of Lyndon Johnson, who described himself as having been a “problem drinker,” once spent the night in the old county jail across 12th Street from the newspaper.

And of course, the inimitable - and missed - Emma Perez-Treviño's coverage of the port bridge scandal, the tax-office arrests and the judicial corruption scandal were priceless examples of good, solid journalism.

Numerous reporters got their start there and went on to fill the ranks of major newspapers and news magazines. Bob Rivard, James Pinkerton, Becky Thatcher, David Crowder, Bill Young, as well many others used to stride across its cracked marble floors to sweat it out under the unforgiving red pen of Ward Coldwell, Don Duncan, Bill Salter, and Lavice Laney. When breaking news happened, it wasn't unusual for AP reporter Ken Herman and UPI's Mack Sisk to walk into the building to write their stories.

In those days reporters typed their stories in manual typewriters in triplicate carbon paper.

Photographers like Ron Schade, Joe Hermosa, Mickey Torres and Brad Doherty used to develop their film in the darkroom enveloped in chemicals before the advent of electronic processing.

After deadline, many would congregate at the Pilot House or another nearby watering hole in town or across the bridge in Matamoros to talk over the day's work.

Oscar Castillo, the editor of El Heraldo en Español, used to regale young reporters with his stories as an ex-Golden Gloves bantamweight boxer and the time when he covered an uprising in Matamoros and the officer in charge of the rebelling troops warned anyone about harming him.

In the old days, the staff, when it was a real crusading newspaper, used to break news stories almost on a  daily basis.

The papers would be carried out the side just past 1 p.m. (it used to be an afternoon newspaper) by young boys who would get two cents for every newspaper they sold when money could buy something. Felipe "Pipe" Solis was the dean of the delivery boys and had a monopoly of the county courthouse crowd business.  "Pale" would hand out the newspapers and collect the coins and dispense their pay daily after they made their sales.

Since the newspaper was located next to the county courthouse between Harrison and Van Buren, news reporters could walk to their assignments as well as walk downtown to city hall on Market Square and later in the old federal courthouse on Elizabeth. It was the days before bureaucrats imposed the 10-day waiting period for information requests and one could just walk in and ask questions of the officials and staff.

The newspaper is now in the process of fixing the new site to accommodate the newspapers from its printing plant in McAllen and to provide offices for its news staff and advertising sales reps.

It will doubtless continue to cover issues here, but it is also doubtful that the glory days of newspaper reporting in this border city will ever reach the levels it did when it was nestled in the womb of Brownsville within a stone's throw from the various government offices.

We are witnessing the end of an era for the city and local journalism and for some of us who worked there as ink-stained wretches it is a bittersweet feeling that we lived to witness it.