‘Out West’ Newspaper Has Really Far-Out Style

The top story in the current edition of Out West is a feature on the town of Nothing, Ariz.; the restaurant section reviews only diners with “Eat” signs, and the newsroom is a 1977 Dodge Sportsman recreational vehicle.

Chuck Woodbury’s 28-page quarterly travel paper proclaims it is “America’s only ‘On the Road’ Newspaper,” and Woodbury means that literally.

Woodbury’s dream was to wander the small towns and back roads of the West and write about the interesting places and people he found there.

He avoids big cities, freeways and any town that’s big enough for a McDonald’s franchise. If that leads to Nothing, that explains the lead story.

He’s a restless drifter, but with a high technology twist. “Modern technology--computers, phone answering machines, the Macintosh with Laserwriter printer--that makes it possible” to publish a one-man newspaper on the road, he said.

Woodbury, 40, founded a monthly newspaper in a suburb of Sacramento and published it for three years. He said he made enough from the sale of that newspaper 1 1/2 years ago to support his new paper for “at least a couple of years” until it gains enough circulation to be self-supporting.

“I’m not making a living off of it yet. But I am making money. I have such a low overhead,” he said in an interview.

His permanent address is a small cottage in Sacramento. But Woodbury spends about two-thirds of his time on the road.

His RV is equipped with more than $10,000 in so-called “desk-top publishing equipment,” including word-processing and typesetting computers and photo-processing equipment. While on the road, his business office is a telephone answering machine which he calls every other day for messages. His sister picks up the mail for him a couple of times a week and deposits subscription checks.

Woodbury not only shoots and prints photos and writes on the road, but also sets type and does page makeup at a small desk in the 6-by-10-foot living quarters of his 11-year-old RV.

“I’ll come back with a dozen or more pages made up and the rest (in the computer),” he said. Printing is done at the nearby Roseville Press-Tribune.

Woodbury sells his newspaper the same way he gathers stories--mostly by chance meetings.

He gives copies to people he meets in his travels, hoping to win subscribers, and has persuaded a few merchants in the RV parks and country stores he has visited to offer it for sale. It is available “here and there” throughout the West and at one bookstore in Great Britain.

“Subscriptions (at $5 per year) are coming in at about 10 a day now,” he said, and single-copy sales totaled about 600 more so far for the spring 1988 edition.

“I just want to let it grow naturally and keep a positive cash flow. I need a few thousand subscribers to make it,” he said.

So far, Woodbury’s newspaper has no advertising, “and I may not, because it’s a hassle,” he said. “I’ve got quite a ways to go before it’s of interest to advertisers.”

Woodbury writes about two-thirds of Out West himself, and he buys free-lance material at what he describes as “lousy” rates of $20 to $60 for articles and $6 to $10 for photos.

His guidelines to free-lance contributors are keep it “light and tight . . . no puff pieces, and please, no articles about great big city hotels or restaurants.”

The focus is on the rural areas of 15 Western states, and sections of the paper are devoted to travel and camping tips, personality profiles, history of the rural West, humor and famous people in small towns.

Each issue features a “road of the month” and “animal of the month” such as the jack rabbit or buzzard, and a photo feature.

Rural Mailboxes Next

The first photo features were on highway signs. Upcoming is one on rural mailboxes. Restaurant reviews--”only places with an ‘Eat’ sign”--rate greasiness by how long you can taste your cheeseburger after finishing the meal, and they record how many times the waitress calls you “honey.”

“It’s a blend of travel to out-of-the-way places, profiles on people I meet along the way, whatever I find out there. I just find interesting things and stop. It’s not an RV magazine, but camping features are RV-oriented.

“It’s about life along the two-lane roads of the West. My guide is, any road that’s got mailboxes along it is a good road. The freeways just go too fast.”