What is Open Range News?
A showcase for the work of Mark Duggan, a California-based journalist and documentary producer. Mark is the recipient of numerous awards, including Edward R. Murrows for his news reporting and statewide recognition for his website design.
Featured Stories
Arizona’s Five Cs
The state’s economy was built on Cattle, Citrus, Climate, Copper, and Cotton.
But today, aerospace, biotech, and tourism drive Arizona.
The Five Cs: A Century Later is a radio documentary that examines the state’s original economic engines. We explore their past and hear predictions about their future.
The legendary Colorado Orange apple returns
An apple varietal long thought to be extinct is coming back to life in Colorado. Next stop: your grocery list.
Arizona cotton ‘A successful business,’ despite challenges
Arizona is still part of the Cotton Belt, with about 259,000 acres devoted to the crop. But it’s not easy to grow it in the desert. I talked to two cotton farmers about the challenges they face and how technology has changed the business.
Author Byrd Baylor celebrates the desert
Author Byrd Baylor still writes by candlelight in her rural desert home. It’s just enough light, she says, to see the ink on the page.
Making mirrors
It takes many years to cast a large telescope mirror at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. But the race to build an ever-larger celestial eye leads to discoveries in astronomy.
Geologists learning more about Arizona earthquakes
Earthquakes are on the rise in the Southwest. Geologists use a network of sensors to profile where quakes are happening.
Forecasters keep an eye on the skies
On a busy monsoon afternoon, the National Weather Service’s Tucson office is an electrified place. Forecasters scramble to track storm cells on radar screens, check stream gauges for runoff levels, and issue warnings on possible downstream flooding. They even watch the storms from a second-floor window.
“The kinds of things he believed, he tried to live…”
Gordon Hirabayashi objected to how Japanese Americans were treated in World War II. His fight took him from the Supreme Court to a prison camp in Arizona.
Remembering the Serling brothers
“We were rank sentimentalists and rank romanticists, both of us.”
Separating truth from myth in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral
A closer look at an enduring tale of the Old West.
South African musician Johnny Clegg on nearly forty years of transformation
Clegg passed away July 16, 2019. Here’s an archive interview I conducted with him in 2016, a few days before he performed in Durango, Colorado.
Tom Russell and the vanishing poetry of The Old, Weird America
Tom Russell writes songs about champion fighting cocks, Edward Abbey, the Watts riots, Nina Simone, and the day Frank Sinatra played Juarez. For him, it’s all part of a grand tradition of American storytelling.
‘Bloomsday’ celebrates Joyce book and Irish culture
A 100-year-old book lives on as a reason to celebrate Ireland’s contributions to literature out loud. Each year on June 16, or Bloomsday, people gather around the world to celebrate Ulysses through public readings.
Topics
Arts
Business
History
Landscape
Science
Specials
Arizona’s Five Cs: A Century Later
Collecting Light: AZ Astronomy
Copper at the Crossroads