January 18, 2006
For info: Lisa Sorg, editor, 210-227-0044, Ext. 224

On April 3, 1986, Editor Linda Matys O’Connell introduced San Antonio to a new publication: not a glossy, socialite mag for jewel-encrusted trophy wives, but a scrappy irreverent, muckraking paper staffed by gadflies and iconoclasts who started stories with sentences such as “Bubba is pissed.” Twenty colorful years later, the San Antonio Current is a vital voice in an era of soundbite-driven stories, media consolidation, and government propaganda disguised as news.

The Current kicks off its anniversary year with a retrospective of the paper’s two decades: from breaking news about then-Mayor Henry Cisneros and his adulterous affair, to the phallic cartoon that prompted businesses to ban the paper, to its award-winning stories about media ownership. At 20, the Current has grown up, but not old.