Meet the editor
Barbara Clowdus
Indiantown Currents is published by Barbara Clowdus, a journalist with 47 years in the business. Her start came as a stringer for West Virginia newspapers, writing at night after her five children were asleep.
A free-lance writer at the time, she also worked as a field-office manager for surface coal mines her husband ran on Turkey Bone Mountain in Pickens, W.Va., and in Owensboro, Ky., serving as liaison to state and federal mining regulators in both states. The family relocated to French Creek, W.Va., where they bought a home and added a two-year-old son to their family.
That mining background led to an appointment to a Public Participation Committee by the federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), reviewing a national surface-mine discharge permit into the Little Kanawha River, a pristine stream. After 18 months of study, she cast the deciding vote to deny the permit, ending both her and her husband's careers in coal mining.
With her husband back in Florida for work, she pursued her journalism career at the thrice-weekly Buckhannon Record-Delta, working her way up to managing editor. As a reporter, she earned numerous West Virginia Press Association awards for investigative reporting, creative writing, and breaking news coverage.
Community service brought her recognition by the Black Diamond Girl Scout Council as the West Virginia Woman of Year for 1983. She founded several Scout troops, a children's festival, summer camps, and organized a teen baseball league in her rural community, in addition to serving three terms as president of her Rotary Club.
Those journalism skills fit well in a college public relations and communication office for nine years, bringing national recognition to West Virginia Wesleyan in U.S. News & World Report's "50 Best Small Colleges and Universities in the U.S."
From Wesleyan she moved to Florida, her home state, in 1998, managing a newspaper printing company for nearly a decade. At the same time, she founded the weekly New Mountain Tribune back in Buckhannon, W.Va.; however, the hours caught up with her, and she closed the newspaper after two years.
By 2007 she had retired to Hobe Sound, and by 2010 was publishing Hobe Sound Currents, a printed monthly tabloid that grew into Martin County Currents, reaching 15,000 print readers and 19,500 digital subscribers countywide. She'd been attending and writing about Indiantown's Neighborhood Advisory Committee meetings since 2009, and in 2019 moved to Indiantown itself, launching Indiantown Currents the following year.
Her drive, after nearly five decades in the business, remains the same: report the facts, uncover truth, and provide information beyond the headlines -- the hallmarks of her long career.