Coffee, Competition and the Future of Community Journalism

For over 25 years, on and off, I’ve found myself attending Texas Press Association conferences, missing a few here and there, as life gets busy. But, by and large, I’ve attended many of these gatherings over the years. Having just returned from the 2026 Texas Press Association conference in Dallas, I wanted to share a few insights and takeaways with my readers.

At this year’s conference, Mike Hodges, our long-serving executive director, announced his retirement, though he humorously dodged telling me the exact count of his years. With his departure in the next six months, the Texas Press Association will be on the hunt for a new executive director. Think of the executive director’s role much like a Chamber of Commerce director: they’re the central hub, the go-to person for everything Texas Press. Of course, while the executive director keeps the wheels turning, the board of directors still holds the final word on all key decisions.

One of the most pivotal tasks the next executive director will face is setting the tone for both the Texas Press Association and community journalism at large. A crucial challenge we face is bringing younger individuals into the fold to replace those of us who’ve been around a while. It’s a familiar issue across many industries, but in journalism, it’s critical to address.

The leadership from TPA must actively foster recruitment and development of young journalists, ensuring that the next generation steps in to keep community journalism thriving.

As I reflected during the conference, I felt quite ahead of the curve when I considered my own staff, most of whom are under 30, with the exception of me and my wife. It was a moment of realization that I’m already practicing what I preach. Beyond that, I know that the Texas Center for Community Journalism, led by Austin Lewter in northeast Texas, is tackling the same challenge. I can only hope more publishers will follow suit, dedicating time to train and recruit, just as we do at the Robertson County News and the Silsbee Bee.

I won’t sugarcoat it: training and recruiting younger staff takes time and plenty of patience. We don’t always knock it out of the park, but ultimately, this is the heart of what keeps your community newspaper truly local, run by people who live right here. Without that, frankly, it’s no longer a true community paper. I could talk at length about the current state of group ownership in Texas, where newspapers are run by entities far removed, but let me reassure you: papers owned by people within the community bring far more benefit than those managed from afar, like a group based in New Mexico.

Shifting gears, another hot topic at this year’s convention was artificial intelligence, or AI, and let’s just say the reaction was a mixed bag. I sensed curiosity, uncertainty, maybe a little fear, and even some hostility toward AI. What became clear is that many of our Texas newspapers aren’t quite sure how to approach it, what to do with AI, or how far to take it. It’s clear this is a new frontier Texas.

Once again, we felt ahead of the curve, knowing that both the Robertson County News and the Silsbee Bee already have AI use policies in place. Perhaps next week, I’ll go into detail about what we’ve deemed acceptable. For now, I’ll just say the AI presentations ranged from intriguing to downright unsettling. One pitch, for instance, suggested AI could comb the internet for facts, write the story, source the images, and hand a completed piece to the publisher. I’ll be clear: that’s unacceptable.

The Robertson County News and the Silsbee Bee participated in the Texas Better Newspaper Competition, which pits papers of similar circulation against one another. For example, if you print 2,000 copies, you compete with other newspapers of around 2,000 copies per week. Unfortunately, the Robertson County News was mistakenly lumped into a division for circulations of 5,000 or more, the second-highest category. In reality, with our circulation of 2,041, we ended up competing against papers like Fredericksburg’s Standard Post at 5,487, and others of that scale. I received a letter from Mike Hodges, the executive director, explaining that this was indeed a mistake—an unfortunate mix-up, but one that meant our 2,041 circulation was up against much larger papers, well beyond our category.

But in the end, the Texas Press Association convention felt like what it always has: a social gathering of us old-timers, drinking coffee and trading war stories. One story that stood out, though, was the incredible coverage of the Kerrville flood. Both the Kerrville Daily Times and the Community Journal deserve immense credit for keeping their communities informed under crisis conditions.

Unless you’ve worked in a newsroom, it’s hard to fathom the pressure, gathering information minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, especially when short-staffed. Yet, the Kerrville teams delivered, making their communities proud. They reminded us all what community journalism is truly about.