Kirbyville Banner becomes East Texas Banner following sale by Reneaus

KIRBYVILLE – Amanda Rodrigues has purchased The Kirbyville Banner from Danny Reneau.
The newspaper continues to be published in Kirbyville as The East Texas Banner.
With the sale, Reneau announced his retirement after nearly 50 years in the newspaper business. He praised Rodrigues as one of his former employees and noted she has great ideas and lots of energy to put into the newspaper.
“The most important thing is that she is a Kirbyville native who is active in the community. I have always felt that a person cannot do a newspaper justice unless they live there, know the community, the people, their concerns and their activities,” Reneau said.
Currently head librarian at the Lumberton Public Library, Rodrigues said she has always had an interest in The Banner. As a high school student, she worked at the newspaper for Joe Herndon. As a college student at Lamar University, she returned to work for the newspaper, delivering papers and later reporting.
After graduating from Lamar with a business administration and management degree, she left the Banner to pursue a career as a librarian, first serving as head librarian at the Kirbyville Public Library for several years until she took the opportunity in Lumberton. While working in Lumberton, she earned a master’s degree in public administration from Lamar University. She continues as librarian while publishing the newspaper.
Rodrigues and her husband Mayco have two children. The family resides in Kirbyville.
In addition to boosting the newspaper’s print product, Rodrigues is working to improve The East Texas Banner’s digital and social media presence.
In a farewell column, Reneau reflected on his newspaper career that started with an ad sales position at the Scottsbluff Star Herald in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. “I did not have any experience, but had won an award in college as one of the 10 outstanding sales and marketing students in the Oklahoma City area,” Reneau wrote.
Reneau and his wife Janet started their publishing career in 1975 in Bayard, Nebraska. Reneau noted the newspaper’s circulation grew from 900 subscribers to 1,300 subscribers when they sold it in 1979 and moved to Akron, Colorado, where they published the newspaper for 10 years, resulting in more circulation growth.
In 1989, became a manager of the Star Herald. At the time, the newspaper was a daily of 17,000 circulation in a metro area of about 25,000 population.
After he had worked there several years, Reneau said the owners recognized his desire to run his own newspaper and suggested he start looking for a property to purchase. Six months later he purchased the Silsbee Bee and the Reneau family moved to East Texas.
The Reneaus published the Bee for 31 years, earning state awards and increasing local readership and advertising. They also purchased the newspapers in Winnie and Kirbyville.
In 2021, Reneau sold the Silsbee newspaper and has been running the Kirbyville newspaper for the past year.
“Thanks for all the fun everyone has allowed me to have while I did something that others call work,” Reneau wrote. “This job has allowed me to interview congressmen, senators, governors, and a future president. Even more importantly it has allowed me to interview countless military veterans, unknown numbers of people as they retired, and to work on many community causes.”