It's been quite a trajectory for High Country News, an influential biweekly environmental newspaper which covers 11 western states from its home in small Paonia, Colorado.

With a "thundering" editorial voice decrying environmental "destruction" in the region, HCN was launched in Wyoming in 1970 by rancher-teacher-biologist Tom Bell. For most of the past two decades, it was a "mom-and-pop" operation, run by Ed and Betsy Marston. Over the past five years, it has become what new editor (since 2002) Greg Hanscom jokingly calls "the smallest media empire in the world."

The empire –- actually, a non-profit foundation that gets 60 percent of its funding from subscription fees and 30 percent from gifts to the High Country News Research Fund –- has experienced some important changes recently.

Former publisher Ed Marston, after spending about a year writing occasional articles with the title of senior journalist, retired late last year and is now listed on the masthead as publisher emeritus. Betsy Marston, formerly HCN's editor, is now editor of its syndicated opinion-column service, Writers on the Range.

Meanwhile, a radio program ceased weekly operation last year because it simply "ran out of money," Hanscom said. But the newspaper itself (circulation, 23,000), plus a website with online archives, continue as before. Other HCN products include special reports and books.

The organization's self-proclaimed "mission" also remains the same –- "to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the West's land, air, water and inhabitants."

But Hanscom –- who had started at HCN as an intern, left for a time, and then returned in 1997 as assistant editor –- said the editorial vision "has definitely evolved" over the organization's 34 years.

"In the early days, it sounded the alarm about a lot of the incredible damage by coal-mining companies and others. Under the Marstons, it became less of an activist rag and a more serious undertaking in journalism."

As that happened, the paper increasingly covered "consensus and collaboration," as a result of "epiphanies that the answers to protecting the landscape lay in protecting economies and small communities," Hanscom said.

With that shift, HCN "was widely accused of falling in love with ranchers over the years, and there's some truth to that," he said.

(Certain readers believe the love affair continues. Several letters published in the Jan. 19, 2004, edition complained about a Dec. 8, 2003, article. One of the letter writers said the article "sadly reinforces HCN's reputation of supporting cowboy mythology at the expense of public lands.")

Hanscom said, however, that "just in the last two years there's definitely been a shift, even in our coverage of collaboration and consensus, with a more skeptical look at some projects."

This shift has occurred, he said, both because of staffing changes at HCN and because of the Bush administration's new approaches toward management of public lands in the West, "undoing much of what the Clinton administration did, particularly on energy."

Even with that explicit point of view, however, HCN's website says the paper interprets the West through the different journalistic approaches of "news, analysis and commentary." Asked if he regards it as an "advocacy" publication, Hanscom gave a nuanced reply:

"High Country News is first and foremost about journalism" that is "mission-oriented," he said. "The bottom line is, we're looking out for the environment and for communities, and the way we do that is through journalism. We're different from Sierra or Audubon. We're a lot more than a party line from environmentalists. I hope we're well-rounded."