Uvalde Leader-News owner and publisher Craig Garnett first fell in love with Southwest Texas during hunting trips to his college roommate’s Rio Frio ranch.
“The Hill Country is kind of hard to resist — particularly when you come from Oklahoma and the only kind of trees we have are elm and tumbleweeds,” he said on the latest episode of the bigcitysmalltown podcast.
After working as a publisher at other Texas newspapers, Garnett returned to Uvalde in 1982 with the intent to own his own paper and never left.
Garnett joined host Robert Rivard for episode 84 of bigcitysmalltown to talk about his history with the Uvalde Leader-News, which he has owned since 1989, and how the newspaper approached covering Uvalde’s biggest tragedy to date.
On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos fatally shot 19 school children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. One of those children was the daughter of an Uvalde Leader-News reporter.
Garnett was in his office at the time of the shooting. “The sirens were the first … bellwether that things were not well. You never heard so many sirens in the city. … By virtue of the noise, you knew something extremely unusual was happening,” he recalled.
Rivard said Garnett’s and the Uvalde-Leader News’ “actions in the shooting’s aftermath should serve as the model publisher and newspaper for how to show responsible leadership in the wake of such tragedy.”
As a newspaper owner, Garnett said he felt it was his responsibility to ask hard-hitting questions and search for answers. The Uvalde Leader-News called out the lack of response from police, who failed to confront the shooter for more than an hour during the incident, and also questioned how Ramos was able to get his hands on the weapons used during the shooting.
The New York Times profiled Garnett in November, where he reflected about that day in more detail. He has also written a book on his experience titled Uvalde’s Darkest Hour.
As for the future of the Uvalde Leader-News, Garnett told Rivard, “… I don’t have a plan. I thought I was gonna circle that concept at one point, but things changed. I just want to create that hand-off and I don’t know what that looks like, honestly.”
Listen to the full conversation on episode 84 of the bigcitysmalltown podcast.
