Political Fatigue and the Appeal of Fish & Game

LISTEN: (6 min, 17 sec)

 

RECOUNTING TEXAS FISH & GAME’S forty year history in recent issues has allowed us to reflect not only on what and how things happened, but why as well. Looking back, from today’s world of bitter and angry discourse at every level of daily life, it is ironic that politics helped drive our decision to make Texas Fish & Game our main focus so many years ago.     

Local politics can be just as mind wearying and soul taxing as anything that slithers out of Austin or Washington. In earlier installments, we established that Fish & Game was born into a publishing family that included The Highlander weekly newspaper in Marble Falls.

Today, most people think of, or remember, weekly newspapers as quaint chronicles of simple small-town life, promoting the area’s businesses, glorifying the town’s high school teams, boosting local civic organizations and, most importantly, supporting those anointed (self- or otherwise) into leadership positions.

That is not the way most people remember The Highlander of the 1970s and 80s. That weekly was anything BUT a docile tool of the boards, councils, courts and other assorted power players in and around Burnet and Llano Counties.

Our coverage area—the Highland Lakes—was huge, encompassing two full counties, with three equally sized school districts, three municipalities of around 5,000 citizens each, and several smaller incorporated communities. 

Then, since the area surrounded the five-lake chain of major impoundments on the Colorado River above Austin, we had to play watchdog over the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA)—then, and probably still today, one of the most powerful independent agencies in the state. On top of that, electric power in the region was served by the Pedernales Electric Co-Op. PEC, in those days, was run with an iron fist by A.W. Morsund, a longtime crony of Lyndon B. Johnson.

While the other weeklies in the area were more than happy to side with the politically and quasi-politically powerful, and to provide cover when they misbehaved, The Highlander just wasn’t built that way. We operated with a clear mandate to report news, unfiltered and unbiased. But we also had a habit of hiring editors whose comfort zone always seemed to sit right in the middle of stirred-up controversy.

This meant that in any given week, somebody would have a gripe with the newspaper. And we—as publisher (Roy) and head of advertising (Ardia)—were usually the first to hear the complaints, retraction demands, threats of boycotts and, a time or two, threats of physical violence. Those were exciting times, to be sure. We still had enough of the “young and indestructible” lack of sense and self-preservation to relish all the notoriety and controversy.

But it eventually started to wear on both of us, as well as on our fearless leader and owner of the publishing company, Bill Bray (to whom we paid tribute here two issues back).

By the end of the 1980s, Fish & Game was well established. It had climbed to more than 50,000 readers, and in January 1989 we converted from rough newsprint to slick coated paper stock—becoming a “real” magazine.

As TF&G drew more of our time and interest, it began to serve as an escape from the constant turmoil The Highlander kept churning up around us. 

Meanwhile, the Highland Lakes area kept growing, and so did the opportunities for those in power, and those thirsting for power, to act on their greediest impulses. The prospect of more controversy—and more anger directed our way—looked less and less appealing.

In early 1990, Bray got an offer to sell The Highlander. Before he accepted it, he met with us and pitched the idea of jumping over to Fish & Game full time and moving it out of Marble Falls. Feeling the effects of chronic political fatigue, we were both ready for a change. By mid-year, The Highlander was in new hands, and we had opened Fish & Game’s new offices in San Antonio, free of the burden of political intrigue… and secure in the belief that there was no controversy in fishing and hunting.

Right?

Again, irony had the last laugh. While there is no comparison to the battle between honest news agencies and the entities of power they try to cover, controversy does exist in the fishing and hunting community.

Any time a resource is regulated, people can get touchy. Any time people with money and power gain exclusive access to public resources, people get either angry or defensive. It didn’t take long for us to realize that points of view and emotions are as potentially explosive in this world as in the world of general news coverage. After all, the outdoors sports are a “passion.”

This has reared up in minor skirmishes, from readers upset over our objective reporting of actions by Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, to major battles with organizations and individuals who accused us of bias against their sacred positions on particular outdoors causes.

There have been times we were glad we kept the old Highlander libel insurance policy in force in the new company’s name.

All things considered, though, our day-to-day, week-to-week environment is a lot calmer than when we had to take heated calls from the Burnet undertaker/school board president or the Llano car dealer/city council member.

The outdoors may inspire controversy and raise tempers from time to time, but hunting and fishing are still great escapes from the anger and disharmony that have infected the rest of modern everyday life. The political clamor of our past seems tame compared to the cultivated chaos of today, but it was enough to put us on the trail to our present life and work, and for that, we will always feel thankful.

 

E-mail Roy at rneves@fishgame.com and Ardia at aneves@fishgame.com

 

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