New columnist featured in Leader-News

Willis Webb

A new weekly column, written by 59-year community newspaper veteran Willis Webb, begins today in your El Campo Leader-News on Page 4A.

The weekly column is targeted for Wednesday publication, but could run some Saturdays if space does not allow on some Wednesdays.

Webb's career, all in Texas, encompasses a period from 1947 through 2006. For more than 50 of those 59 years, he either edited and published small town newspapers or was a consultant to a number of community publications.

He has been a consistent award winner on regional, state and national levels in a number of writing categories including columns, editorials, sports, features and news as well as photography, page design and advertising copy and design.

The last 16 years of Webb's career were spent editing and publishing The Jasper Newsboy where he covered and directed such news events as the race-hate dragging death of an African American by three white men which brought an influx of national and international news media to Jasper over a period of three years; the space shuttle crash in a neighboring county; a 17,000-acre forest fire; and Hurricane Rita's 2005 utter destruction of the East Texas infrastructure.

In other locations, Webb was editor of The Conroe Courier where he and his staff broke the story of a new hometown, The Woodlands, in January 1972. While also at Conroe, he directed coverage of the infamous 1974 attempted prison break in Huntsville by Fred Gomez Carrasco in which three Conroe residents were hostages. The coverage netted The Courier a first place from the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

Webb has extensively covered city and county politics as well as state and national figures who have appeared numerous times in venues he served. He has edited and/or published papers in Teague, Galena Park, Rosenberg, Cleveland, Conroe, Lockhart, Fredericksburg, Missouri City and Jasper.

He and his family are long-time friends of Leader-News Publisher Chris Barbee and his late father, Fred Barbee, and Leader-News News Editor Shannon Crabtree worked for Webb at the Fort Bend Mirror in the mid-1980s. Webb is a past president of the Texas Press Association, as are both Barbees.

"I may know more genuine Texas characters, good and bad, than anyone in the state because I seem to be drawn to them. And, when I say that my wife rolls her eyes and says, 'I wonder why?,'" Webb said.

Webb is a sought-after speaker, particularly about the effects of events surrounding the race-hate killing on Jasper, its residents and on the newspaper itself, and on humorous and unusual events in his more than a half century of journalism.