Roswell UFO controversy was a local story
Teri Saylor
Special to Publishers' Auxiliary
Jul 1, 2025
When a New Mexico farmer discovered what he thought was a UFO crash in his pasture, authorities turned to the local newspaper and put a sleepy western town on the map
Steeped in history and a great mystery that spawned a long-running conspiracy theory, the Roswell Daily Record is poised to face the future with the same vision and courage that has defined it for over 133 years.
“I’m pretty passionate about this newspaper,” Co-publisher Barbara Beck said. “It’s a fight to keep it going, but I know how valuable it is to our town.”
Beck took over the newspaper in 2015. It has been a part of her family for over a century. Her maternal grandfather was Thomas Shearman, who bought the newspaper in the 1930s. Her father, Robert H. Beck, joined the family business in 1947, just one year before marrying the Marjorie Sherman, the owner’s daughter.
Today, the Roswell Daily Record is owned by Beck and SaraLei Fajardo. It is published daily online and printed three days a week on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Its circulation is listed as less than 12,000.
Across its lifespan, the Record has only missed one issue, Beck says, even during the COVID-19 pandemic and tough financial times.
“Financially, it is a struggle,” she says. “During COVID, small businesses were eligible for PPP loans, but the loans were short term, and we’re all still struggling.”
She adds that media and news literacy continue to wane.
“It seems newspapers are losing their muscle mass,” she says. “I feel that a lot of people read stories on Google and Facebook, thinking they are actually news articles, and it’s very concerning to me that people are starting to lose an understanding of what real news is.”
Beck, who has journalism in her DNA, was not always directly affiliated with newspapers, even though she comes from a newspaper family.
She wrote for the Associated Press in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After returning to the U.S., she earned a bachelor’s degree in human studies and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, enjoying a successful teaching career before taking over the Record.
She is a past president of the New Mexico Press Association and is heavily engaged in newspaper advocacy both at state and federal levels.
Recently, she was part of a delegation speaking in support of bills in New Mexico’s legislature that would create tax credits for businesses providing newspaper printing services for news organizations and for employing journalists.
On a trip to Washington, D.C., Beck spoke with her local representatives about supporting Newspapers in Education and was shocked by their response.
“Some of them asked me why we were interested in an NIE program that is unduly influencing kids,” she says. “We’re talking about local newspapers, and NIE has been in existence for a long time.”
Beck adds it is another example that speaks to the erosion of media literacy and the importance of local newspapers in this country.
“Any teacher can tell you about the value of newspapers and what great tools they are in their classrooms,” she says.
The Roswell Daily Record’s biggest claim to fame came over 75 years ago when it reported on the “Roswell Incident,” the alleged crash of a UFO just outside town.
On July 2, 1947, a local rancher discovered a debris field full of the metal-like remains of an object that appeared to have crashed out of the sky. He loaded some of the wreckage into his truck and drove to Roswell, where the U.S. Air Force 509th Composite Group was stationed.
Both the Roswell Daily Record and its long-defunct sister paper, the Roswell Morning Dispatch, covered the news about the crash, calling the object a “flying disk.” But the next day, the military claimed it was a weather balloon.
The newspaper reported “over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program.
In headlines from the newspaper’s archives, it was reported that media from all over the world descended on Roswell amid rumors that bodies of aliens from outer space had been recovered.
Even today, the world is fascinated by the incident, and through it all, the Roswell Daily Record has been there to report the news and to spark public’s interest and fascination with this story.
In 2022, on the 75th anniversary of the crash event, CBS News reported the debate is far from settled, and “for decades, journalists, authors, documentary film crews and others fascinated by the incident have unearthed and publicized countless bits of information and artifacts of that time.”
The adage that proclaims “the newspaper is the first rough draft of history” is true in Roswell.
Curiosity seekers still point to the front pages of the Daily Record and its long-defunct sister newspaper, Roswell Morning Dispatch, for their first-hand accounts of the crash in real time as it unfolded and shows that 75 years after the Roswell Incident, people are still making discoveries in the newspaper’s archives.
A column published in the special section stated: "Any historian will tell you that going back to original sources is priceless when it comes to getting an insight into what happened and how those people involved were reacting and perceiving things, and what the feeling was in the local community.”
Both the Roswell Daily Record and the Morning Dispatch are trademarked, and their UFO crash stories and images cannot be reproduced without permission or by paying royalties to Record Publishing, the parent company.
The headlines provide an amazing glimpse into Roswell in 1947 and the mystery that made the town instantly famous, still enduring to this day.
“There is a lot of tourism in Roswell, and I like to tell people we wouldn’t have the Roswell story without the newspaper,” Beck said. “Most people don’t realize that.”
On the newspaper’s website, Beck wrote that “over decades of conspiracy theories, the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public’s interest and fascination with this story.”
A women–owned business, the Record still has original copies of the newspapers published around the crash, and Beck has formed a separate company for its UFO-related events and merchandise.
This fall, she’s planning a special event around the annual tour of The Trinity Site, a significant historical landmark as the location of the world's first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945. This test was part of the Manhattan Project and marked the beginning of the nuclear age. The site is now part of the White Sands Missile Range.
Aside from the fame associated with the Roswell Incident, at its heart, the Daily Record is a newspaper, and it has been a daily for a long time. When the newspaper celebrated its 125th anniversary, Beck began collecting artifacts from its early days, including some original plates, equipment and furniture.
There are just four presses in New Mexico still printing newspapers, and the Record has one of them. Beck calls it “Baby Blue” and gives tours to local groups and school children.
Despite the struggles caused by flagging readership and advertising, she says newspapers are still strong in Mexico, where most are still locally owned.
Thinking back, the Roswell Incident started out as local news, and even though it has drawn worldwide attention, it’s still a local story and part of the town’s history and lore.
“It proves that on a local level, newspapers are crucial,” Beck says. “You can tell I’m pretty passionate about this, and I will keep fighting to keep it going.
Teri Saylor is a writer in Raleigh, N.C. Reach her at terisaylor@hotmail.com
