Bode, Last Editor of Old 'Dallas Times Herald,' Buys Texas Weeklies

By: Mark Fitzgerald In last August's issue of E&P, Roy Bode mused about newspapers from the perspective of an editor who had been out of the business since the Dallas Times Herald folded in 1991. He said then he still had the newspaper bug and was looking to buy one.

This week, he returned to newspapering, buying four weeklies located northwest of Austin, Texas.

"I had been looking around for papers the last several years, and made an offer on a couple of them," Bode said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "I lost to Freedom [Communications] in one case, and a small group in the other. I had even looked at these papers last fall, and couldn't come to terms" with the then-owner, American Consolidated Newspapers.

Bode and his wife Ellen formed Bar 30 Media to buy the assets of Highland Lake Newspapers, publisher of four community papers: The Highlander, a twice-weekly with 6,155-paid circulation serving the Marble Falls area; and 4,000-paid circulation Burnet Bulletin; the Kingsland Current; and 4,700-free distribution Llano Buzz & County Journal, all published Wednesdays.

The papers were sold by Gary Gerlach's Next West Newspapers Inc. In a statement, Gerlach said health concerns necessitated the liquidation of his newspaper assets.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The broker on the transaction was Santa Fe, N.M.-based Dirks, Van Essen and Murray.

Bode said Gerlach had made improvements in the paper in a short period of time. "They got them started the right way," he said. "This is a healthy little group in an area that is really going to grow, and is already really growing."

Roy Bode will be editor and publisher of the group, while Ellen Bode will become associate publisher.

Their company is named after the Bar 30 Ranch, which sells registered Texas longhorns.

Bode, 57, opened the first Washington bureau of the Arkansas Gazette, and joined the Times Herald as a reporter in 1970. He was editor-in-chief when the paper was folded in 1991. He was vice president for public affairs at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for the past 14 years.