Giving Compass' Take:
- Madeline de Figueiredo and Anya Petrone Slepyan spotlight rural newsrooms' reporting on the plans to construct a border wall in the Big Bend region of Texas.
- As a donor or funder, how can you support rural news outlets like The Big Bend Sentinel? Which news outlets are providing vital, verified information about key issues in your community?
- Search for a nonprofit focused on supporting rural newsrooms.
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In early 2026, the Trump administration quietly advanced plans to build more than 100 miles of steel border wall through the remote Big Bend region, a rural area in Far West Texas stretching down to the Rio Grande River. The administration waived dozens of environmental protections to expedite construction through protected areas like Big Bend State Ranch Park. When Charlie Angell, owner of Angell Expeditions and a river guide in the Big Bend region, first heard of the border wall plans from a friend last winter, he called his local newspaper, The Big Bend Sentinel, demonstrating the lead rural newsrooms are taking on Big Bend Border Wall coverage.
“I called the Sentinel and I said, ‘Hey, have you heard of this?’ I was just told for sure that there is going to be a physical 30-foot-tall wall, with a concrete pad into the ground,” Angell said, giving a lead to a rural newsroom to focus on Big Bend Border Wall coverage. “[Reporter] Sam Karas was looking into it…and saw there was this huge contract awarded for a company that had built a lot of the wall.”
Ten days later, while Angell was on the banks of the Rio Grande scouting canoe routes near newly-installed razor wire, he received a call from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers notifying him that his property would be affected by the wall plans.
At the time, little confirmed information about the project was publicly available. Early details emerged in fragments through contract filings and informal conversations, leaving both residents and journalists to piece together the scope and location of the proposed construction.
“We put out the first story about [the wall] and that really accelerated everything, where then the whole community was more or less on the same page,” said Sam Karas, a Big Bend Sentinel reporter and fellow Rio Grande river guide, on Big Bend Border Wall coverage.
Local outlets quickly became the primary source of verified information and Big Bend Border Wall coverage in a rapidly-changing situation where official details remained scarce and inaccessible.
Read the full article about rural newsrooms' reporting on the Big Bend Wall by Madeline de Figueiredo and Anya Petrone Slepyan at The Daily Yonder.