Cyndy Slovak Barton retires as Hays Free Press/News Dispatch sold

KYLE – After 38 years in the newspaper business and serving as publisher for the Hays Free Press / News-Dispatch for more than two decades, Cyndy Slovak-Barton retired to take over other family ventures.
The current Hays Free Press was founded by the Harwell family of Kyle in 1903 and has deep roots in Kyle and Buda. The paper previously operated under a number of names, including Onion Creek Free Press, The Free Press, Kyle News and more. In 1953, two students at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, now Texas State University, Bob Barton and William “Moe” Johnson, bought the Kyle News. Barton was a social science student and Johnson was an education major.
Barton and Johnson operated the paper throughout college before Johnson left to pursue a career in education. He was a coach and teacher at the Kyle School and eventually became the first superintendent in Hays CISD. He and his wife are the namesakes of Moe and Gene Johnson High School in Buda.
Barton continued as publisher, turning the newspaper into the award-winning Hays County Citizen. Barton sold the Citizen in 1978 and began what has now become the Hays Free Press.
Barton’s son Jeff met his wife Cyndy Slovak while they were students at Baylor University. They worked for the newspaper at the University of Texas at Austin following their time at Baylor. They later worked for J.J “Jake” Pickle in Washington D.C. before taking over the Barton family newspaper in 1983 when Bob Barton became a member of the Texas House of Representatives. Bob was an influential political operative who mentored, advised and supported numerous candidates who became successful officeholders.
After Jeff Barton left the newspaper business in the 1990s, he became Precinct 2 County Commissioner for Hays County from 1992 to 1999 and again from 2007 to 2010. He is now the co-owner of Gap Strategies, an urban planning and communications company that has contracts across the state. Slovak-Barton has led the family paper to where it is today with award-winning stories and photos.
A member of the Texas Newspaper Hall of Fame Class of 2020, Slovak-Barton is a past president of South Texas Press Association, served on the board of the Texas Press Association and as a member of the Texas Press Association Legislative Advisory Committee. She was many times a winner of the association’s Community Service Award and Sweepstakes Award, a winner of the Jim Lehrer Award for Investigative Journalism and winner of Envision Central Texas 2012 Stewardship Award for Redevelopment of the Barton Word Building in Kyle.
Noting that the the Hays Free Press has always been a family newspaper and a family business, “it is time for a younger generation to take over,” Slovak-Barton wrote in her final column. “Someone with more knowledge of social media, video stories, design, websites and more.”
She also noted that Barton family remains a part of Hays County, with other businesses and a new development in the works.