Janice Velasquez ends longtime career at Gatesville Messenger, closing an era

Janice Holden Velasquez’s departure from The Gatesville Messenger closed a long stretch of continuity at a paper that has helped chronicle Coryell County since 1887. For many readers in Gatesville, she was the person behind the scenes who kept the newsroom moving, first as a front receptionist after graduating from Gatesville High School in 1995 and later as one of the staff members who knew how to do nearly every job in a small newspaper office.

Marshall and Debbie Day hired Velasquez soon after her graduation, and her role grew steadily from answering the phone and greeting visitors into classifieds and production. She built ads, proofed pages, laid out the paper and sent it to print. After Roberts Publishing Company sold The Gatesville Messenger to Hyde Media Group in 2021, Velasquez was named director of operations, putting her at the center of the daily workflow as well as the paper’s institutional memory.

That memory mattered because the paper’s own history has been deeply tied to the county’s. The Messenger traces its roots to 1887, when local news in Gatesville was already a fierce part of civic life. In 1884, the town had two weekly newspapers serving an estimated population of 600. A decade later, rival editors W.W. Penn of The Gatesville Messenger and Pat Robertson of The Gatesville Star were killed in a gun battle, and the papers were later consolidated into The Gatesville Messenger and Star-Forum. In more recent decades, Marshall Day became publisher in 1996 and led the paper for 21 years before his death in 2016, and Debbie Day succeeded him as publisher in January 2017.

Velasquez’s exit landed at a difficult moment for the newspaper itself. A March 16 fire damaged the Messenger building and destroyed its archives, stripping away a physical record of the county’s past and making experienced staff even more valuable. Hyde Media said the April 25 edition was its last before ownership transferred to Copperas Cove Leader Press, and the paper shifted operations to Gatesville Primary School with space offered by Gatesville ISD Superintendent Dr. Barrett Pollard. That upheaval gave added weight to Velasquez’s departure, because it removed one of the people who knew how the office worked before the fire, before the sale and before the next owner arrived.

Sam Houston said it was rare for someone to stay with one organization for more than 30 years and described Velasquez as the face of The Gatesville Messenger for many readers. In a county where local journalism depends on people who stay, learn every corner of the operation and remember the names, places and events that shape the community, her departure marked the end of an era.