On some days, a casual visitor to the website of Headwaters News might be excused for assuming it's primarily intended as a summary of environmental news stories from the Rocky Mountain region.

Five of seven articles featured on the homepage on March 29, for instance, had strong environmental connections, and a sixth was about worker injuries at nuclear waste cleanup sites.

On the site's Page Two, with summaries and links for other articles of note, there were five articles under the Environment heading that same day. Three articles appeared in both the Community and Economy categories, and two each under Politics and Legislature.

But despite appearances, the people behind Headwaters insist the five-year-old website is not an environmental publication, but a broad-focus news website that reflects the pervasive role of environmental concerns and issues in the region.

The mission of its publisher -- the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West -- is "to develop a regional identity for the Rocky Mountain West," Headwaters editor Greg Lakes said.

The basic premise behind that mission, he said, is that it makes more sense to consider the region's issues from the perspective of shared cultural, social, and economic features, rather than along the lines of political boundaries.

"Headwaters helps build that identity one day at a time, one headline at a time," Lakes said. "It's a daily snapshot of where the region is as a first step toward deciding where we want it to go."

He acknowledged that "a big proportion of what we do is environmental news," but said he and Daniel Kemmis, an author and former elected official who is director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, "adamantly" believe Headwaters is "not an environmental newsletter or news service."

"Reporting on the Rockies" -- the Headwaters slogan -- would be an impossible task, however, without providing a lot of environmental material, since so many contentious, often resource-related, issues in the region stem from the huge proportion of land in public ownership there.

"On almost any major issue, if you scratch deeply enough, there's an environmental aspect to it," Lakes said.

In choosing which articles from the region's press to feature, one of the toughest jobs involves deciding which of the Headwaters categories to place them in, he said. "That's part of the beauty of Headwaters. It's a connect-the-dots news service. We put the dots out there and let users connect them."

A veteran Montana newspaper reporter and editor, Lakes is Headwaters' only full-time employee. With the help of a half-time assistant editor but without the assistance of any news-selecting software tools, he picks the articles the website features each day.

The online versions of 40 to 50 publications are surveyed each morning, from British Columbia and Alberta in Canada down to the Mexican border areas of Arizona and New Mexico. Before picking an article, Lakes wants to know if it "tells us something about the West."

With that approach, he seeks to "build context for the region" -- looking, for instance, at the same issue in Edmonton and Phoenix, or at different issues in the same part of the region.

Another way to provide context is through Headwaters' original journalistic content -- a collection of material that appears biweekly under the Western Perspective heading.

The centerpiece is a new guest column on a certain topic every two weeks, many written by newspaper reporters. Lake writes an accompanying column on the same subject, built around links to relevant articles from various newspapers. Readers pitch in with letters of reaction and comment that are published on the same web page. The author of the guest column follows up through the two weeks after its original posting with further thoughts in a weblog.

Lakes hopes next to find funding to support a new Perspective package every week. Meanwhile, other original content on the website has included a collaboration with the University of Colorado's Center for the American West, producing a series of interviews with former secretaries of the Interior.

With more plans and ideas than money, "our problem as a non-profit is how to pay the bills." Lakes said.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided a three-year grant to launch Headwaters and has continued to provide funding (see note below). Other funders for Headwaters have included the Liz Claiborne & Art Ortenberg Foundation. The Northwest Area Foundation has funded reporting on poverty-related issues, and Headwaters recently completed its second annual fundraising drive, collecting about $8,000 from readers who weren't asked for any specific amount.

Through a partnership with a coalition of public television stations, Headwaters has also been providing fresh news content daily for the coalition's web pages devoted to its special projects on various issues.

"It's one service we sell, one way we're trying to make ourselves self-sustaining," Lakes said.