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In The New West magazine
Jonathan Weber: Chasing the West’s Big Story
Not quite three years ago, in the spare bedroom of my home on the outskirts of Missoula, Courtney Lowery and I launched an online publication devoted to the big story of growth and change in the Mountain West. We always envisioned a multi-product company, but NewWest.Net would be at the core. And we think we’ve done pretty well in building a rich publication with an active, engaged community of readers and contributors. The immediacy of the Internet, and the power and flexibility of so-called Web 2.0 tools, has made it possible to create a new kind of publication.
Yet even in the Internet era, there is a lot to be said for old-fashioned print. Over and over again, people have asked us, when are you going to publish in print? And it’s not that these folks are hopeless Luddites, or resistant to change for the sake of it. Rather, they appreciate the power of ink on paper -- a highly flexible, shareable, portable, high-definition technology in its own right.
Although I’ve been involved with print newspapers and magazines for most of my two decades in journalism, it’s been a few years now since I’ve done a magazine, and the past month or so has been an enjoyable reminder of the surprisingly vast differences between print and online publishing.
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From The New West magazine
Design Showcase: Ag Chic
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Jill Baumler's home near Bozeman, a 70-foot-tall grain elevator that once housed up to 28,000 bushels, is part of a new trend -- albeit small -- of rehabilitating tattered artifacts of the West's booming agriculture economy.
"There's a real interest in our past and the things of our past," says Bruce Selyem, the founder of the Country Grain Elevator Historical Society. Restoring churches, schools and barns has been popular for some time, Selyem says, but just in the last decade or so, "the grain elevator has become a symbol of the same thing."
Click here or on the photo above to see Anne Medley's photos from Baumler's home. [more]
Special 5-part Series
A Brief History of ‘Aspenization’
David Frey's off-season journey through some of the Rockies’ premier ski resort towns took him in search of the "next Aspen," whatever that might mean. "Aspenization" is seen as either a blessing or a curse in ski towns and in this five-part series, David sets out to find out which is which in Western towns that, along with their neighbors, have undergone some of the most dramatic recent changes in the West.
As David points out in Part I of the series, these communities also serve as bellwethers as more and more towns become caught up in an economy based less on traditional resources than on lifestyle. It’s not even about skiing anymore. It is about people seeking out a corner of the West that calls to them.
Click below to catch up with the other parts of the series...
Conservation, Development & Class Conflict
NewWest.Net Special Feature: The Ameya Preserve
There are some stories in the New West that seem to encompass many, if not all, the issues we are facing as an evolving region. One of those stories is the case of the Ameya Preserve, a large-scale luxury home community planned in Montana's Paradise Valley.
In this five-part series, writer David Nolt explores the issues involved and the controversy surrounding the Ameya Preserve, which at its heart, begets complex and conflicted feelings about what kind of place the West is, what it is becoming and who is bringing the change.
Part I: Conservation, Development & Class Conflict
Part II: The Rural Subdivision, Deluxe
Part III: Montana State Land for Sale
Part IV: Private Property, Public Access and Montana Values
Part V: The Race to House the Super-Rich
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