Blake Killin of the Ulster County Townsman Says What's Doing Upstate

Two years ago emergency switchboards in Ulster County lit up when some mysterious black aircraft buzzed Esopus Creek. When Blake Killin heard the news, he knew he had not only next week’s front-page Ulster County Townsman headline, but also the opportunity to do what he loves most: ferret out information, get the story. It’s why he got into newspapers in the first place. Killin eventually traced the aircraft’s origin, a special-ops Air Force base in Florida. Apparently the military has been using the area for maneuvers for generations. Killin told the "bird colonel" in charge of the operation that they should have warned the locals about it in advance.

"You would have had people lining the Esopus Creek with armchairs waving American flags," he says.

People over in Woodstock, meanwhile, had a less patriotic view of the ops. "They thought the military was eavesdropping and they were dropping special chemicals out of the black helicopters to stifle the population’s will to resist," Killin says. It’s hard to tell whether he’s joking. "You wouldn’t believe all the stuff that came out of that one."

The Ulster County Townsman has been continually published since 1953. It’s a mainstream weekly broadsheet that goes for 40 cents an issue and usually runs a dozen pages. It turns over about 3000 copies a week in the summer, 2200 in the winter. Display ads go for six bucks per column inch for a one-time run. Graphically, the paper is low-tech–clip art of a fish looks like it may have been cut out by hand, and some of the column heads look like they were rendered on an Apple IIc–but Killin says it was "no-tech" when he bought it in 1992. He plans on taking it high-tech. Killin is the owner, editor, publisher, ad rep, art director and only full-time journalist of the Townsman, based in the jigsaw puzzle-perfect, bubbling-brook town of Phoenicia, in the heart of the Catskills. It started out in Woodstock; and because that’s where the paper’s second-class mail permit is located, Woodstock remains its nominal headquarters. (Killin still maintains an office there, but calls Phoenicia home.)

Killin grew up in Queens and Westchester. He got his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio State, and never expected to do anything with it. He worked for IBM in Manhattan and Westchester for 17 years before being laid off in 1990. Killin was thinking about going to chef school when he heard the Townsman was up for sale. He’s had family in the Ulster County area since the early 1900s, and spent weekends and summers there all his life. He bought the paper, axed the nosey-neighbors column, purchased a package syndication deal from King Features that included an astrology column, cartoons and a crossword puzzle, and relaunched the paper.

Killin, 50, describes himself as a lifetime Democrat, but after moving to a Republican town and buying the local Republican paper, he’s now a registered Republican–but in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. "I look at my role as trying to bring people into the center, trying to build some consensus," he says. "Because if everybody’s out on the fringes, nothing gets done."

The biggest story of Killin’s newspaper career was the Watershed Memorandum of Agreement in 1997. "That’s probably the thing that cements our relationship with the downstate residents," he says. "Most people down in New York don’t know what a watershed is. They open up their tap and out comes the water, and everything’s fine." The $1.5 billion agreement involving the Catskill-Delaware Watershed, which provides 90 percent of New York City’s water, prevented the city from seizing property through eminent domain; the city now had to buy property at fair market value from a willing seller, and New York had to compensate the population for what the city and state’s antidevelopment regulations were taking away. "It’s been a tremendous battle of sheer hatred and distrust toward New York City, because they condemned people’s property and didn’t compensate them for it," says Killin.

After Sept. 11 the city sealed the reservoirs. Hunting and fishing licenses in the area of the watershed have been suspended. Until recently, roads crossing the reservoir were held up by heavy security, which meant a smarting bitch-slap to area businesses. A local school district had to spend an extra thousand dollars a day for transportation, "and as usual the City of New York didn’t give a rip," says Killin. "All they care about is their water. They don’t care about their effect on the local people... It seems every time we turn around New York is doing something to try to kill our business. We’re convinced that they won’t be happy until they’ve packed us all up, moved us all out and put an electrified fence around the entire watershed."

Development is the hot–and most divisive–topic in the Catskills these days. Lefty antidevelopment forces have proliferated out from Woodstock into historically Republican towns like Phoenicia, says Killin. A new weekly newspaper, The Phoenicia Times, was born out of the development debates. Killin says it came about for the sole purpose of promoting and electing its own left-leaning candidates. If that’s so, they have succeeded: come Jan. 1, the new administration is taking over. Some Phoenicians now refer to their town as "Woodstock West." The old-timers are dying off, their children are moving away to find better jobs and outsiders of means are taking advantage of the cheap real estate. The newcomers have jobs in the city, and aren’t really worried about the local economy, says Killin, but they are concerned about development–under the guise, of course, of environmentalism.

"They don’t want to see anybody else nailing two boards together. They’ve got their piece of paradise, and they want to keep it just the way it is. And they expect us to make a living mowing their lawns and cleaning their houses during the week while they’re down in the city working. And that’s just not the way it’s going to be."

These folks recently tried to block construction of three soccer fields for the local kids on donated private land. Though the project was environmentally feasible, says Killin, "There are some people here who don’t care what the law says and don’t care that if you pay your property tax you have the right to do with your land what the law says." The youth sports group sponsoring the project withdrew its application for a construction permit in the face of a zoning board they knew would kill their plans. Instead, the landowner received permission to put in an enormous lawn. Volunteers seeded the land. Killin himself donated $8500 of an inheritance toward construction. Next spring, when they have a nice big grassy field roughly the size of three soccer fields, the youth group will simply ask the board for permission to put in six soccer goals and some flags.

Killin’s primary concern with development is whether a project passes environmental muster, and how it will benefit the local economy. The casino issue, though, is more complicated. Developers want to bring gambling to Ulster County. When Killin thinks of casinos, he thinks of Atlantic City and of the gross urban decay just steps from the boardwalk there, and the drug and alcohol problems, prostitution and gambling addiction that come with having a casino in the community. He says that invading the pristine nature with casinos would be "sacrilege." He thinks they should build them down in the now-depressed "Borscht Belt," by the once-fabled resort hotels, where the infrastructure and labor pool already exist.

Being a reporter on a beat the size of Killin’s can be tricky. One has to be extra careful not to burn sources. There’s a barroom colloquialism, "Mahogany Ridge," that Killin says is native to the area. It describes the wooden edge of the bar you lean on while wetting your whistle and shooting the shit. "When the liquor starts flowing and the lips get loosened, you get information that people don’t necessarily want to read about in the paper that week... Booze and bylines don’t mix–and if you compromise that trust, then you’ll never get any information from anybody again... If somebody says, ‘I want to invoke Mahogany Ridge,’ then that means, okay, this is off the record."

Killin says all the local journalists and community leaders know about and adhere to Mahogany Ridge. Killin uses barroom chatter to confirm his leads, not to exploit unwilling informants. Learning restraint was Killin’s biggest challenge when he started out 10 years ago. At first he was quick to jump on a story. He learned to be more tempered, more mature, to soften his edge–a necessity, since Killin doesn’t carry libel insurance. (Though he’s been threatened with lawsuits, no one has ever filed.)

Killin’s not sure what the immediate future holds for the Townsman, but it doesn’t look good. He has the feeling the paper will not survive the Jan. 1 changing of the guard in Ulster County politics. But then that might not be so bad. Another line of work would free up personal time, allow him a better social life. His relationships have suffered from his profession. He’s up at 7, out of the office 12 hours later, on his way to cover a meeting or other event from there, done by 11 p.m., then on his way home to write it up. That doesn’t leave much time for significant others. He hasn’t had a day off since July 5. He says he’d consider selling the paper if the right offer came along.

Which is not to say his job isn’t rewarding.

"Sometimes you’re driving down from the printer’s at night and you get that feeling that, boy, I’ve got a great paper coming out. And other times you come down and you go, well, we didn’t hit a home run this week, but you’ve got to come out with product every week."