Online magazine heeds call of the New West

photo by David Erickson

Not much room to roam. J-School intern Joe Prebich (l) squeezes into New West's tiny office with Courtney Lowery and Jonathan Weber.

By Jim Beyer
J-School Web reporter

Jonathan Weber and Courtney Lowery sit in a small office — three computers hum, the phone rings incessantly and the Fed Ex man is at the door. The two are launching a new online magazine, New West Network, the next morning. Both look tired. The phone rings again. Weber brings the receiver to his unshaven chin and starts talking quickly while Lowery takes time to grant an interview to a University of Montana School of Journalism student who is a week past deadline.

The smell of chocolate chip cookies wafts through the open door. Weber’s young stepdaughter, Shannon,plays with her grandparents. The office window looks out over the confluence of the Bitterroot and Clark Fork rivers west of Missoula. The snow on the distant mountains reflects the gold and red of the setting sun. Weber and Lowery work in Weber’s home, tucked in the pines beside a rural road, instead of in a sterile high-rise office building.

Welcome to the new Rocky Mountain West, the West that they intend to write about.

New West Network will focus on the monumental changes coming to the Rocky Mountain West. The area is rapidly changing from a resource-based economy to a service economy. New West will report on the issues affecting current residents and newcomers — on the clash of cultures where the new-technology Silicon Valley meets the Old West of the Clark Fork Valley.

Weber came to Missoula as the first T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor in January 2002. He taught a two-credit seminar at the J-School and mentored the Kaimin. Like many immigrants to the Rocky Mountain region, Weber was starting over. His previous job as founding editor of the Internet business magazine, The Industry Standard, ended abruptly when the company filed for bankruptcy during the dot-com bust of 2001.

"The Industry Standard was a business failure, but editorially the Standard was a success,"” Weber said. “I have no regrets.” He has observed and participated in online media since the early 1990s, so he is confident of the success of his new venture.

New West will be published online at first. Weber and Lowery started three Web logs (blogs) based in Missoula, Salt Lake City, and Boulder, Colo. Readers may comment on the topics published on the blog and post topics as “citizen journalists.” The blogs will discuss “local issues, arts and culture, politics and the environment” said Lowery.

Lowery is a product of the Old West. She grew up on a farm near Dutton, Mont., a small, dying agricultural community on the edge of the Great Plains north of Great Falls. Dutton’s population has been declining since its heyday in the 1920s. The town offers little future to its youth, unless their families own a farm. Emblematic of the migration from field to factory that many rural Americans are forced to make, Lowery worked for the Great Falls Tribune while she was a high school student.

On a clear day, when the wind was not blowing dust from the fields, Lowery could see the Rocky Mountain Front from Dutton. In 1997, she crossed those mountains to attend the UM School of Journalism. Lowery took Weber’s class in the spring of 2002, and she was editor of the Kaimin during his tutelage. They stayed in contact after she graduated that December. Lowery won a job with the Lee Newspaper chain in Helena and then moved to the Associated Press in Omaha, Neb.

Weber called Lowery in the summer of 2004 and asked if she wanted to work on his new magazine.

“Missoula is not a hard place to be lured back to,” she said. Lowery was willing to learn HTML computer language and was confident of her writing skills. She said she learned a lot from her night job at the AP, where she didn’t have a copy editor and a managing editor looking over her shoulder, correcting mistakes and checking facts.

New West’s contributing writers/bloggers will have copy editors and Lowery watching over them.

“One of the things different about us is that we’ll be a blogging network with an editorial structure,” she said. “Our goal is to marry the best parts of print journalism and the best parts of blogging, so we can add value to the media that is out there while creating a new genre.”

One of New West Network’s first stories reported the death of Hunter S. Thompson, a man who pioneered another genre of modern journalism. Other stories discussed a proposed new ski resort on Lolo Peak, Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming and Brian Schweitzer of Montana, Qwest, Salmon Rushdie and “the best New West café,” according to Weber.

To Lowery, New West is her dream job. “I didn’t expect to land it at age 25,” she said.

New West Network will be funded by online advertising, Weber says. This type of ad market is coming into its own now, he explained.

Online publication is growing rapidly, but Weber looks forward to printing his magazine on paper. Hard copy is about “long narrative, packaging, visual presentation. It is self-contained, crafted and has visceral appeal,” he said. Hard copy is also permanent and easily transported. The considerable cost of print version will be paid by advertising when it is launched in the spring of 2006.

The bottom line for Weber: “Any start-up is risky, but it’s more fun than working for Time Inc.” 

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