Forrest Preece

During the summer before he entered the fifth grade, Forrest Preece embarked on an ambitious project. He single-handedly put out a newspaper focused on his Rosedale neighborhood, which he dubbed The Neighborhood News. "I had to type it on my manual typewriter, using carbon paper," he recalls. With 12 subscribers paying 25 cents each, that meant banging out a few copies on the manual. "Copiers in the mid-fifties? You must be dreaming.” These days, Preece writes mostly from his condo overlooking downtown Austin. The fifth-generation Austinite says "the view of my beloved hometown inspires me.”