Denton Record-Chronicle, 1993-95

Learning to Lead

The Denton Record-Chronicle was the first newsroom Cobler ran. He arrived as managing editor in September 1993 and spent a little more than two years working with a talented staff at the he first had responsibility for the full daily report and began putting into practice his ideas about watchdog journalism, enterprise reporting and strong visual presentation.

One of ther earliest major projects examined security at the Denton County Jail. Five inmates had escaped on Christmas Eve 1993, yet Sheriff Weldon Lucas insisted there was no serious security problem. Reporters Paula Cobler, the paper’s K-12 education reporter, and higher education reporter April M. Washington dug deeper. Their Jan. 2, 1994 special report found that Denton County had recorded more jail escapes than any other county in Texas in 1993 — 14 escapes involving 16 inmates. The package did not simply report the latest jailbreak; it examined overcrowding, staffing, earlier escapes and the county’s failure to resolve longstanding security problems.

The reporting clearly irritated the sheriff. Not long afterward, while Cobler was attending a Leadership Denton class, members of his SWAT team entered in full tactical gear, called him out, put hime against a wall and planted a small baggie of white powder on him. The commander asked, “What’s this in your pocket, Cobler?” He answered, “I’m just happy to see you.” It got a laugh, but the message behind the stunt was hard to miss. For a young managing editor, it was an early lesson in the friction that can accompany aggressive local accountability reporting.

The staff produced much more than investigations. When fire swept through Denton’s historic downtown Square before dawn on Sept. 22, 1994, destroying three buildings, the newsroom produced an expansive breaking-news report with dramatic photography, a detailed chronology, a map of the affected buildings and stories examining the fire department’s response and the consequences of closing the downtown fire station. The next morning’s paper, dated Sept. 23, carried the follow-up under the headline “Questions rise from ashes.” That date has another significance: Daughter Nicole was born that day.

The work allowed Cobler the opportunity to return Paula to her home state of Colorado later that year after he was hired to lead the Greeley Tribune. Record-Chronicle General Manager Bill Patterson remained a friend for years to come, pointing him to the Victoria Advocate as a good opportunity in 2007.

Big Ambitions for a Small Daily

The surviving front pages, stored in Cobler's attic across many subsequent moves, show the breadth of what the newsroom attempted during those two years. The newsroom investigated disparities between Denton’s two high schools in “Denton’s Dilemma,” revisited school integration 25 years later, examined the uncertain future of Texas Woman’s University, scrutinized the campaign to lure the Dallas Mavericks to Denton County, and covered major breaking stories with an emphasis on depth rather than simply recording events. Even on a relatively small daily, the goal was to make the newspaper indispensable to the community.

Those two years showed that a community newspaper did not have to think small. Given good reporting, aggressive editing, strong photography and the freedom to pursue important questions, a local newsroom could do work with genuine public impact. That lesson stayed with Cobler at every newsroom he led afterward.

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