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My early publishing career led me to El Paso, TX, to work with a very talented group, as the Managing Editor of "The Village Voice of El Paso, Stanton Street Weekly News."

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Below is an part of an interview I did recently with Mother Jones that describes the project and my role. 

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The Inside Story of Beto O’Rourke’s Short-Lived Alt-Weekly

How running “El Paso’s Village Voice” kicked off his political career by Tim Murphy

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Tucked inside the first print issue of El Paso’s new alternative weekly newspaper, Stanton Street, in January 2002 was a warning shot from its 29-year-old publisher, Robert F. O’Rourke.

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His late father, a county judge and writer who had died in a bicycle accident just a few months earlier, was “the inspiration behind this venture,” O’Rourke wrote. But the letter moved quickly from a memorial to something like a stump speech. His target was the city’s only major English-language newspaper, the Gannett-owned El Paso Times. “Too often we have heard the lament of our fellow El Pasoans who feel neglected and uninspired by the daily paper, beholden to a corporate board that meets in McLean, Virginia, where they don’t know the word adelante and they’ve never heard of Pat O’Rourke.”

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Click here to read the full story.

Top photo: Stanton Street Weekly News launch team (left to right) Grace Madden, Marina Monsisvais, Beto O'Rourke, Sito Negron, Lisa Degliantoni, Paco Casas.

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Bottom photo: Design and Photography credit of Citizen Colonia cover: Grace Madden

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