A copy of the Texas Stock and Farm Journal that includes a reference to The Alice Reporter.
More than a century before the new Alice Reporter was founded, another newspaper covering Alice carried the same name.
Historical records show the original Alice Reporter was publishing in Alice by at least 1892, when the community was still a small South Texas town. The Texas Almanac records Alice as having a weekly newspaper called the Alice Reporter that year. By 1900, the Reporter was one of two weekly newspapers serving Alice, alongside the Alice Echo.
Although no known copies of the original Alice Reporter have been located in today’s major digitized collections thus far, evidence of the newspaper survives in the pages of other South Texas newspapers.
Contemporary newspapers reprinted news from the Alice Reporter, sometimes identifying the paper as the source: In one surviving issue of the Cotulla Record from 1898, an article about Sgt. H. G. Dubose’s return to Alice was republished and attributed to the Alice Reporter. In the Aug. 3, 1898 edition of the Texas Stock and Farm Journal, they cite The Alice Reporter in a passage about cattle prices and exports.
These contemporary print references to The Reporter provide a glimpse into the work of a newspaper whose own editions have proven much harder to find. They also demonstrate that The Alice Reporter was actively gathering and distributing local news beyond Alice itself, which was a major accomplishment for such a new publication and community.
The paper’s exact founding date, editors, publishers and final year of publication remain subjects for further research. A newspaper bibliography lists The Alice Reporter dating back to 1891, although surviving editions have not yet been identified to independently confirm that date.
What is clear is that the newspaper was part of Alice’s early development. In 1892, the town had a hotel, two saloons, two general stores, a cotton gin and the weekly Alice Reporter. By 1894, Alice had become the busiest shipping point in South Texas, which helped earn its nickname as the “Hub City of South Texas.”
The original newspaper’s editions may be lost to history, but its reporting has survived in the pages of other Texas publications.
Today, more than 130 years later, we carry that name forward with the same responsibility that has always defined journalism — to seek the truth, preserve the stories of our community and hold them to the record. The name may be old, but the mission remains the same: in pursuit of truth.
