While wearing ‘two hats,’ Cooper Publisher Colvin relishes both roles

By DONNIS BAGGETT
Texas Press Association

COOPER, Texas — Ashley Colvin, publisher of the Cooper Review, makes her living by wearing two hats — figuratively, at least.

One is the hat of a weekly journalist working in the trenches of her hometown. In an earlier era, a black-and-white PRESS card would have been tucked into the hatband of her fedora.

Her other hat is the camouflaged duty cap of an Army National Guard soldier. It usually hangs on a military headquarters hatrack, since Colvin serves as a paralegal for the National Guard’s Joint Adjutant General’s Corps.

“It’s basically the oldest law firm in the country, created in 1775,” she says. Her assignment utilizes some of the same research, interviewing and communication skills that she’s developed as a journalist. And she looks forward to her deployments.

“I enjoy being a paralegal because I enjoy working with attorneys. They’re direct, concise and well-studied. There’s no fluff about them,” she says.

There’s more to adjutant general service than dealing with courts martial. Colvin spends much of her Guard work time providing “soldier support” to enlisted men and women struggling with legal needs such as divorces, notary services and court orders.

“You have to remember that soldiers are just people, and they have the same problems in life as other people,” she says. “We do focus on helping them in their civilian lives as well.”

Based out of the Guard’s military police unit in Tyler, Colvin says she relishes service life:” It feels like family. That’s the beautiful thing about the military.

No matter where you go from here on out, whether you have a family or not, you always have the military family.”

Military service attracted her with its “discipline, structure, values, morality,” she says. She even appreciates the routine requirements of an ordinary soldier — things like physical fitness testing and qualifying with an M-16 on the firing range.

But she’s quick to add that she’s only able to wear her military hat because she has a solid support team back home to put out the 146-year-old Cooper Review.

Her mother, Barbara Colvin, “does the logistics, folding and labeling the papers, delivering them to the post office and putting them on the racks in town,” she says.

“My mother is retired, so helping out keeps her moving and she loves having a job from home.

Watching her create her own process for being efficient with the paper has been endearing, and she is very efficient with time, delivery and managing money.”

Colvin also relies heavily on staffers Brenda Perez and Garrett McGraw for news coverage and other essential duties: “Invoices and city council stories are handled by Brenda. She’s very excited to participate because she wants to get better at writing newspaper articles, as she has dreamed of owning her own paper one day. Garrett is extremely passionate about bringing political truths to local readership.”

When she’s on deployment, Colvin works remotely to provide editorial content for the Review. She relishes the leadership and advocacy components of journalism.

“It’s not about having a voice. It’s about having the right voice,” she says.

She wants her column “The Declaration” to be “that voice of rural America from the perspective of the original true meaning of the word ‘republican.’ The republicans in the Revolutionary era were true believers in a republic government defined by God’s law.”

Colvin acquired the Review in 2023 from Karrie Harmon and her daughter Rhandi, Colvin’s best friend from childhood.

A graduate of Texas A&M Commerce University with a master’s degree in clinical therapy, she worked at papers in Sulphur Springs and Paris before coming home to Cooper and taking the reins of the Review.

Like most newspaper publishers, she is looking for digital ways to enrich and broaden her paper’s content while reducing the burdens of increasing print and postage expenses and a tough advertising environment.

“It’s so expensive to print these editions weekly,” she says, “And rural advertising is difficult.”

She’s considering going to online-only publication during traditionally slow summer months to adjust to today’s weekly newspaper challenges.

“A couple months a year would be a great way to slowly integrate my readership into getting used to reading the paper online,” she says. “Yet, if it ever becomes a fully online publication, I would still find a way to provide an analog, or printed, form of content — like a weekly newsletter, a column – more like a catalogue almost.

“No matter what, readers want something personal, educational, informative and in their own hands, and I completely understand that because I do too.”