Loving County is consistently identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as the least-populous county in the contiguous United States. The 2020 census counted residents in the low double digits, with Mentone as the county seat and the only named community. There is no newspaper, radio station, or television outlet headquartered in Loving County, and ETTG has not indexed any active local source publishing primarily for it. Coverage of county government — a county judge and a four-member commissioners court — typically reaches residents through Pecos- and Odessa-based outlets in adjacent counties, and through industry-trade press following the surrounding Permian Basin oil and gas activity. Loving County is an unusual case: the population is so small that traditional ad-supported journalism has never been viable here. But the county's role inside the Permian Basin means decisions made by its commissioners court — over road bonds, oil-field traffic, and tax abatements for energy infrastructure — carry outsized economic weight. The absence of a local watchdog makes that activity meaningfully less visible than it would be elsewhere.