A fierce defender of the Western word
AFTER 39 YEARS WITH High Country News, Betsy Marston is retiring. For longtime readers, it will be hard to imagine the publication without her.
It was Betsy and her late husband, Ed, who brought High Country News from its birthplace in Lander, Wyoming, to Paonia, Colorado, in 1983. Both New Yorkers, the Marstons moved to the North Fork Valley in the mid-1970s and started two local papers before taking over HCN.
Although Ed was known as the “big ideas” man, Betsy was the seasoned journalist. She graduated from Columbia’s journalism school and was New York’s first woman news anchor on a local PBS station. A dedicated civil rights activist, she brought a strong moral compass to her role as editor.
