INSTITUTE FOR RURAL JOURNALISM & COMMUNITY ISSUES (IRJCI)

This is a collection of journalism that has won, should win, and should have won awards -- taken from The Rural Blog, a Web log of rural issues, trends and events that is regular reading for hundreds of journalists who cover rural issues and need story ideas, sources, comparisons and inspiration.

TV station in Grand Rapids, Mich., investigates aging rural housing projects

In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversaw a program to subsidize the construction of apartments for needy rural residents. Now, some of those structures are showing their age, and residents want to see more repairs, reports WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich.

There were 15,000 small apartment projects in all, and WOOD-TV took a look at the inspection reports for the dozen rural housing projects in Kent County after residents complained about inadequate maintenance.

"In general, the inspection reports reflect signs of aging buildings," Henry Erb reports. "Worn and stained carpets, cloudy windows, pieces of siding or soffit missing. The inspector noted that at one place the owner said they didn't have enough money to replace the worn carpet. Small examples of what is happening on a nationwide scale -- a struggle to keep such federally-backed housing from becoming rural slums."

A 2004 report from the USDA found that "no property has adequate reserves or sufficient cash flow to do needed repairs," and so recently the department has tried to add funding, Erb reports. In Michigan, the USDA approved $22 million for 15 projects, but Erb writes that funding remains far below the levels of the 1980s. (Read more)

In Aiken County, S.C., two emergency medical employees recently were fired after allegations they misused their county funds. As a result, the local newspaper, the Aiken Standard, filed an open record request for the credit-card reports of the 60 employees with county-issued cards.

The paper found no "widespread or gross misuse" in its "cursory study of the files," Haley Hughes wrote. "The County's own internal review of its employee credit card statements is ongoing. The information is public record and as such, the Aiken Standard has posted the documents to its Web site for review by members of the public." (Read more)

So, the paper is letting readers decide for themselves if county employees have misused their credit cards. Not a bad idea, as far as we can tell. The records can be seen here. Thanks to Al Tompkins of The Poynter Institute for the heads up on this story.

Jennifer Frazer's stories for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle of Cheyenne on mysterious deaths of elk in 2004 won this year's Science Journalism Award among small newspapers from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “It had the allure of a detective story and an unlikely culprit: a small green lichen that most people wouldn’t notice even if they walked right over it,” Frazer said. Here's more, including judges' comments, from the AAAS release:

Frazer described the steps by which researchers determined that a poisonous lichen was the likely cause. In a two-part series, Frazer also described efforts to save the remaining elk and help the species recover. Calling her series an example of “superb local science writing,” Robert Lee Hotz of The Wall Street Journal said Frazer “opens a window into the mysteries of field epidemiology, turning a story of doomed elk into a page-turner of a lethal botany and the consequences of ecology.” Guy Gugliotta, a freelance science writer formerly with The Washington Post, said the series was a “compelling narrative detective story that shows how science can be put at the service of a community and why it matters.”

Frazer is now a science writer for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. To read her elk series, click here. The locally owned Tribune-Eagle has a daily circulation of 15,681, according to Editor & Publisher. It circulates in southeast Wyoming and western Nebraska, and has a Sunday edition which claims a circulation of 18,500. It says it is part of the Wyoming Newspaper Group, "an affiliation of newspapers with joint ownerships and interests, along with the Laramie Daily Boomerang, the Rawlins Daily Times, the Rock Springs Daily Rocket-Miner and the Northern Wyoming Daily News in Worland." For more background on the paper, click here.

The Mississippi Legislature is an unusual one, because it has a somewhat nonpartisan character. Members run as Democrats, Republicans or independents, but don't hold party caucuses. That may change after Tuesday's election, because heavily favored Gov. Haley Barbour and his state GOP are spending big to elect Republicans to legislative seats and a Democratic lawmaker is trying to form a coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats to unseat the Democratic speaker of the House.

With the powerful speaker's chair up for grabs, many voters want to know how candidates would vote if elected to the House, and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal in Tupelo is asking the question of candidates in the 16-county area it covers. That's the first time Marty Wiseman, director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, can recall such a question being asked of legislative candidates, reports Tom Baxter of Southern Political Report.

The Daily Journal, whose circulation of 35,000 makes it the largest U.S. paper based outside a metropolitan area, has a reporter in the state capital of Jackson, Bobby Harrison. He reported recently that no members of the Legislative Black Caucus would support Rep. Jeff Smith, D-Columbus, who is trying to unseat Speaker Billy McCoy, a Democrat from Rienzi in northeast Mississippi. The Republican Caucus had already voted likewise, but the election of new legislators could turn the tide.

With the speaker running in the Daily Journal's coverage area, Lena Mitchell of the paper's Coirinth bureau reported this week on McCoy's race for re-election to his House seat. "The House speaker appoints the committee chairman and sets the agenda for House business," she explained, adding that Smith "has support among legislators who favor a more conservative leader."

The Daily Independent in Ashland, Ky., has expanded its Web site to include a new section dedicated to environmental issues, including local content such as the story and audio-enhanced slide show about a Russell, Ky., teacher, Doug Keaton, (in a Daily Independent photo by John Flavell) whose class built a wind turbine.

Flavell, the 18,000-circulation paper's chief photographer, and Mark Maynard, the managing editor, are the main editors of the site. It includes a collection of stories and agency reports about climate change, renewable energy and conservation. In an e-mail announcing the section, Flavell wrote that the paper hopes the section will be "a resource for world wide research on the climate crisis and possible solutions."

The section is worth a look, and it is another sign that community journalists can do great work on the Web, too. The Independent is the largest Kentucky paper owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (Read more)

The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer in Georgia is running an impressive series on the issue of prescription drug abuse, a scourge in many parts of rural America. It ranges from additiction to teenagers to that of pharmacists and physicians.

The 44,000-circulation daily began the series on Sunday with a story called "Shackled" that offers both local and national perspective. Reporters Larry Geirer and Brad Barnes write that three in 100 Americans are addicted to prescription drugs and that "48 million people in the United States -- some 20 percent of the population -- have used prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse." This well-reported story explores responses to the issue in Columbus and elsewhere.

In an accompanying story, Gierer writes that the addiction is a problem among those who prescribe the drugs: "The American Medical Association estimates that 10-15 percent of doctors and pharmacists suffer from prescription drug addiction. By comparison, less than 5 percent of U.S. residents use a painkiller nonmedically in a year, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration."

In another story, Gierer examines drug abuse by teenagers, some of whom throw "trail mix parties" during which they dump pills into bowls and then take whatever they fish out. The series is definitely worth a look, because it is a great example of blending statistics with anecdotal examples.

In 2005, Scott Reeder, left, the Springfield, Ill., bureau chief for Small Newspaper Group, won multiple awards for his investigation into teacher tenure in Illinois, called "The Hidden Costs of Tenure." This week, the newspaper chain published Reeder's latest investigative effort, which compares teacher discipline in Illinois and the rest of the country does it. This series is called "Hidden Violations," and it used data compiled from records requests in all 50 states. On the Web site that hosts the report, Reeder summarizes his key findings about Illinois' record disciplining teachers:

Of the 50 states, only Virginia revokes or suspends fewer teaching certificates than Illinois.

On Aug. 26, a tornado swept through Northwood, N.D., killing one person, injuring 18 others and destroying 90 percent of the single-family homes in the rural community of less than 1,000 people. The local weekly newspaper, The Gleaner, circulation all of 700, was in trouble after the disaster, but it got some help from journalism students from the University of North Dakota, which is about 40 miles away.

The students decided to "adopt" the newspaper, writes their UND professor Dr. Jacquelyn Lowman, and so they have been contributing articles to each issue of The Gleaner throughout this semester. The articles and photos (such as the one above by by student Jackie DeMolee) tell the stories of how residents survived the tornado, and how they are trying to deal with the destruction. The effort is a great example of community journalism, and it is a reminder of the importance of hometown newspapers to their communities. (Read more)

Editor of small La. daily reflects on covering the Jena Six as a local story

Long before CNN and The New York Times came to Louisiana to cover what became known as the "Jena Six," The Town Talk of Alexandria, about 30 miles away, had been reporting the whole story — and doing it in way only a local newspaper could. The 32,000-circulation daily had the story first, and for the last 12 months it has published more than 110 articles about the case and the surrounding events. Even as the story exploded, this local newspaper kept its coverage grounded in the context of the community.

Executive Editor Paul Carty offers what he's learned from the experience in a Q&A with Poynter Online's Al Tompkins. It's an interesting read that shows how the paper (owned by Gannett Co. Inc.) made its choices in coverage.

During the e-mail interview, Carty offered what he sees as the clear differences between the local and national coverage. "It's much easier for journalists who come into the story from a distance to arrive at conclusions that are based on less information, or to agree with someone else's conclusions (prepackaged and e-mailed, thank you very much)," he said. "The probability of assuming information and drawing conclusions increases significantly with physical and chronological distance from any story."

In addition to the extensive coverage the newspaper has done in print, its Web site has great resources as well, including a section that answers readers' basic questions about the "Jena Six." The newspaper also has archived each of the articles related to case, as well as video and audio clips, and all are available to readers.

A Florida Panhandle newspaper founded to advocate better management of growth in rural, coastal Wakulla County, and published occasionally, has won its legal battle with the Florida Elections Commission -- but no reimbursement of $80,000 in legal fees for its American Civil Liberties Union attorneys.

Responding to a complaint, the commission said in 2005 that the Wakulla Independent Reporter might have to report its finances if deemed to be an "electioneering communication," not a "newspaper" as defined in the law. "Investigators questioned [Publisher Julia] Hanway's failure to print the name of a publisher or to include obituaries, wedding announcements and ads from local businesses," and said the paper was campaigning against certain county commissioners, writes Lucy Morgan of the St. Petersburg Times.

The commission found no probable cause to believe that the paper knowingly broke the law, but Hanway and the ACLU "took the state to federal court, charging a violation of the First Amendment," writes Jim Ash of the Tallahassee Democrat, published in the county just north of Wakulla. "Regulators vigorously fought the suit, but dramaticaly changed course and acknowledged that Hanway was publishing a newspaper after they lost an initial round in court." In his order dismissing the case last week, federal judge Robert Hinkle said the commission's executive director “saw the light only on the courthouse steps, indeed, only in the courtroom itself.” (Read more)

Morgan said the case "effectively shut down" the Reporter for more than a year, and openly questioned the judge's denial of legal fees in the first sentence of her story: "Sometimes a courtroom victory leaves one wondering about the cost of justice." She quoted Hanway as saying, "It's a mystery to me how Hinkle could have come up with this determination, because the FEC would never have relented if I had not had attorneys who were willing to fight the FEC's original decision." She told Morgan the next Reporter "will be out shortly." (Read more)

Small daily in rural Minnesota runs series on attempts to curb youth suicide

Beltrami County in Minnesota has the state's highest suicide rate for people under 35, but a recent series from The Bemidji Pioneer showed signs of progress in dealing with a problem that can be a touchy one for community newspapers.

The latest entry in this continuing coverage highlighted Beltrami Middle School's prevention program and its effects. Since the program's inception more than two years ago, no students have committed suicide and fewer have been hospitalized for suicide attempts, writes Michelle Ruckdaschel. "The suicide prevention program provides suicide awareness training to staff and students and offers students the opportunity to participate in coping skills, stress management, problem-solving and chemical awareness groups," she writes, adding that it includes education for parents as well.

The program came as result of a study done by the Minnesota Department of Health that showed Beltrami County's suicide rate for people under 35 was twice the state's average. In response, staff at the middle school proposed the program and helped hire a part-time suicide prevention specialist to run it.

The article comes on the heels of others done by 9,500-circulation daily paper that explore the issue of youth suicide and how Beltrami County has responded to it. Reporter Molly Miron wrote an article about how grieving families worked to raise the issue during Suicide Awareness Week. She wrote another article explaining the work of the Beltrami Area Suicide Prevention Task Force. The Pioneer followed these stories up with an editorial that said suicide prevention should remain a priority. The pieces provide a solid series as well as an example for other smaller daily newspapers. (Older articles require a subscription fee.)

"In my neighborhood of Southwest Virginia, backyard gardens are as common as satellite dishes," author Barbara Kingsolver, right, writes for The Washington Post. But elsewhere, "My generation has absorbed an implicit hierarchy of values in which working the soil is poor people's toil. Apparently we're now meant to rise above even touching the stuff those people grow. The real labors of keeping a family fed (as opposed to the widely used metaphor) are presumed tedious and irrelevant. A woman confided to me at a New York dinner party, 'Honestly, who has time to cook anymore? My daughter will probably grow up wondering what a kitchen is used for.' The lament had the predictable blend of weariness and braggadocio, unremarkable except for this woman's post at the helm of one of the nation's major homemaking magazines. . . . On the other side of the world from that New York dinner party, another influential woman gave me an opposite perspective on leaving behind the labor and culture of food: that it's impossible. We only transform the tasks, she claims -- and not necessarily for the better."

Vandana Shiva is director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, which operates Navdanya, a farm-based institute that helps rural Indians "learn how to free themselves from chemicals, indebtedness and landlessness," Kingsolver writes. "Shiva's research has shown that returning to more traditional multi-crop food farms can offer them higher, more consistent incomes than modern single-crop fields of export commodities."

Here is Kingsolver's main point: "Industrial farming -- however destructive to the land and our nutrition -- has held out as its main selling point the allure of freedom: Two percent of the population would be able to feed everyone. The rest could do as we pleased. Shiva sees straight through that promise. 'Most of those who have moved off of farms are still working in the industry of creating food and bringing it to consumers: as cashiers, truck drivers, even the oil-rig workers who generate the fuels to run the trucks. Those jobs are all necessary to a travel-dependent, highly mechanized food system. And many of those jobs are menial, life-taking work, instead of the life-giving work of farming on the land. The analyses we have done show that no matter what, whether the system is highly technological or much more simple, about 50 to 60 percent of a population has to be involved in the work of feeding that population. Industrial agriculture did not 'save' anyone from that work, it only shifted people into other forms of food service.' Waiting tables, for instance, or driving a truck full of lettuce, or spending 70 hours a week in an office overseeing a magazine full of glossy ads selling food products. Surprise: There is no free lunch. No animal can really escape the work of feeding itself." (Read more)

The columns of a rural newspaper publisher who "poignantly tried to explain the unexplainable to his neighbors" play a key role in "The War," the PBS documentary.

Al McIntosh ran the Rock County Star Herald in Luverne, Minn., at 4,600 the smallest of the four towns that provide the focus for the personal lenses through which filmmaker Ken Burns tells the story. Burns, the leading producer of historical documentaries, said finding McIntosh's columns was "in some ways ... the single greatest archival discovery that we have ever made."

The opening segment of the film quoted a McIntosh column about a local woman in London who had seen her friends killed in the blitz, and when she came home and looked out over the peaceful countryside from her family's front porch, she found it hard to believe that the rest of the world was at war. That's a paraphrase; we weren't recording. Trust us, McIntosh's writing was better than ours.

McIntosh would have played a smaller part in the program "had it not been for Tom Hanks, who encouraged Burns to use more in the film," and asked to read his words for the film, Steve Gansen of MBI Publishing Co. told the Star Herald's Lori Ehde. The company recently published McIntosh's wartime writings in in a book, Selected Chaff, taken from his column, "More or Less Personal Chaff." (Read more)

"Luverne was about as far away from the action as any place in

America

, but each day the war’s reality grew closer and closer," says a PBS press release. McIntosh reported "on war bond drives, victory gardens, rationing of essential commodities and the difficulties families faced trying to keep their farms going with so many young men in the armed forces," and chronicled "the travails of every family in town," says the guide to each episodes. Even as victory neared, he cautioned his readers to keep their heads down and keep working “until there is no doubt of victory any more” because “lots of our best boys have been lost in victory drives before.”

McIntosh wrote inspiring words, and his career was an inspiring one for rural journalists. He was a North Dakota native and University of Nebraska journalism graduate who worked at one of the Lincoln dailies and turned down jobs at the Kansas City Star and The Washington Post to fulfill his dream of running his own, small-town paper. fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning and editing a small-town newspaper. In 1949, he was president of the Minnesota Newspaper Association, which gives an annual Al McIntosh Distinguished Service to Journalism Award. He sold his paper in 1968 and died in 1979.

The first button on the Star Herald's home page is "THE WAR." Burns gave the Star Herald an interview last month, and came to town Sept. 6 for a premiere of the documentary. "Some ... say the fact that Luverne is part of such a historically significant film is the biggest thing to happen here since the Cardinal basketball team won the state championship in 1964," Ehde wrote in that week's advance story.

The editor and publisher of The Jena Times wrote this week that he and his son stopped giving interviews to national news media after the British Broadcasting Corp. "twisted everything that was said to make us look like fools" and an unnamed U.S. news outlet's report of a later interview "was twisted to the point that we did not even recognize it."

In an editorial headlined "Editor addresses a world audience," Sammy Franklin, right, defended his town and LaSalle Parish against media representations of racism in light of the "Jena Six" case that prompted protesters from all over the nation and journalists from much of the globe to converge on the town of 3,000 on Thursday. He said racists in the parish, which is 12 percent black, are "few and far between." He also defended his weekly newspaper, saying it had reported the truth about the controversy and treated African Americans with equality since he bought it in 1968. (Read more)

For the paper's advance story on the protest, its report on recent court action involving one of the Jena Six, and its chronology of events, click here. Franklin's son, Assistant Editor Craig Franklin, wrote in his column, "Lost in all of the racial headlines is the fact that the school, despite all the distractions it has faced in the past year, managed to exceed all projections for academic growth and is listed with the highest academic rating that a school can achieve." (Read more) For a balanced and comprehensive profile of Jena, from Todd Lewan of The Associated Press, click here. For an update of events since Thursday, from Abbey Brown of The Town Talk, the daily paper in nearby Alexandria, click here. UPDATE: For an interview with Paul Carty, executive editor of The Town Talk, by Al Tompkins of The Poynter Institute, click here.

Bob Davis, editor of The Anniston (Ala.) Star, circulation 25,000, has won the Carmage Walls Commentary Prize for newspapers with less than 50,000 circulation. The award, presented by the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, encourages thoughtful, courageous and constructive editorial page leadership" on local issues, says the latest SNPA eBulletin.

Contest judges said "Davis managed to take what might be a dry, yet important, topic – constitutional reform – and turn it into interesting reading with new angles each time he wrote about it. . . . His employment of a variety of writing styles, including poetry, was successful at surprising readers over time, in a persuasive way.”

Davis wrote on his entry form that Alabama's 1901 constitution was written to establish white supremacy in the state. "Though much of the Jim Crow is now rendered a dead letter, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, the part that locked all but the rich and powerful out of state and local government is still very much alive," he wrote. "The editorial mission of The Anniston Star when it comes to constitutional reform is to explain the problem on a personal level. If finger-wagging was the cure, the document would have been rewritten years ago. Our attempt is to use a variety of styles to urge reform."

For examples of Davis's work, and that of other winners, click here. Second place in the small-circulation division went to David Klement of the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald, circulatrion 47,000.

In days of yore, a bucket brigade was the hand-to-hand predecessor of firefighting equipment. This month, it is a rescue mission, by journalism students, for weekly newspaper editor-publisher Ken Ripley, reports the director and namer of the brigade, Jock Lauterer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The photo shows Lauterer (with hand on table), Ripley and the students who are commuting an hour or more each way to help publish the Spring Hope Enterprise, circulation 4,100, while Ripley is out of the office for surgery and a long recovery this fall.

Lauterer, director of the Carolina Community Media Project in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communications, writes in his Blue Highways Journal that he got the idea before Ripley's need arose -- from the recent tornado that virtually destroyed Greensburg, Kan., and its newspaper: "It occurred to me: Hey Lauterer, what would YOU do if an North Carolina community paper took a direct hit from a hurricane? How prepared are you? Do you have a Rapid Response Journalism Team primed and ready?"

Lauterer worked up a plan, "But then my thinking took another turn. Why sit around and wait for disaster to strike? Find a community paper right now that needs help. And that led us to Spring Hope, where I knew my long-time pal and veteran editor and publisher, Ken Ripley, was going in this month for a double hip replacement, a process that will require two separate operations and a lengthy recovery at home. Knowing the unstoppable Mr. Ripley, he refuses to miss an issue, putting out his paper via laptop from his bedside."

The Todd County Standard of Elkton, Ky., has a circulation of about 2,500, but does a better job than many larger weeklies of putting items on the public agenda. On May 17 we noted its four-story package about the need for broadband Internet service in the county, part of the paper's year-long "Focus on the Future" series, which continued with "Some BIG Ideas" for the county of 12,000, which we noted July 11.

The paper presented ideas without regard to what they might cost, but none were outlandish. "Let's just talk about what might be possible and perhaps someday someone with the resources or the drive might just succeed," said the staff-written story. The paper planted seeds, giving them a first dose of water and hoping others will agree to take over. Then it invited readers to submit their own ideas, published this week.

The ideas included a Corvette raceway and resort, linked to the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, where the sports car is made; improvements in the current Jeff Davis Days festival (the Confederate president was born in the county) and making sure that visitors know that the county is also the birthplace of Robert Penn Warren, America's first poet laureate. The Standard has no Web site, but click here to see the story.

As many smaller newspapers only have just begun to use the Web, The Cullman (Ala.) Times has started posting daily video updates on its site. The 10,000-circulation daily drew praise for its innovation from Editor & Publisher's Pauline Millard, who said the paper showed the new technology could be used on a budget. (At right: An image from one of the recent Web videos available daily on the paper's site.)

In her column, Millard writes that the staff uses "simple equipment, such as cheap work lights from Wal-Mart, a light diffuser made from PVC and clearance-rack fabric, and an ancient Macintosh computer that serves as a TelePrompTer" for a studio, while the images and sound are captured with "a $300 consumer video camera and a $100 shotgun microphone."

Above all, the newscasts are "hyperlocal," Millard says, and thus give readers and viewers want they want. Called "The Update," the video follows the format of a TV news program, complete with an opening tease of the day's top stories followed by a montage of the newspaper's staff in action and a nod to The Update's sponsor. After the top stories, The Update divides the remaining time among feature and sports stories. In all, it is concise 11-minute video that does far more than the "talking head" format of some newspaper Web video. To view a recent Web video update from The Cullman Times, go here.

Utah mine owner Robert E. Murray's "recklessness" and the Mine Safety and Health Administration's "failure to rein him in" are to blame for the recent tragedy, but others should face congressional inquiry next week: "Murray's co-conspirators in the coal industry," opines The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky.

In the latest in a series of detailed, hard-hitting editorials on the safety issues raised by the disaster, the Eagle declares, "We continue to be haunted by the still largely unexamined story of how the industry fought -- successfully -- to keep MSHA from requiring modern mine communications technology in underground coal mines," the Eagle writes. MSHA's excuse, from the Federal Register: "Since technology is constantly changing, newer systems that may be as, or more, effective than [current technology] may be developed."

"We've never seen a worse excuse for fatal inaction or a better example of what's wrong with the coal industry and mine safety enforcement," the Eagle editorial concludes. (Read more)

As the rescue effort at the Crandall Canyon Mine of Murray Energy Corp. in Utah remained halted, leaving six miners trapped and probably dead, The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., continued to offer some of the sharpest criticism about the current state of mine safety in the United States.

In this week’s edition, an editorial listed the names of the 63 miners killed nationwide since Jan. 1, 2006, as well as the six miners still missing in Utah. “It's a terrible toll -- 70 miners in all -- and one that should be unacceptable, because fatality-by-fatality reviews show that most of these deaths could have been prevented by a combination of systematic risk assessment, conscientious mine management, diligent regulatory enforcement, and adoption of technologies that are taken for granted elsewhere,” the editorial said.

The editorial suggested key links between recent coal mining deaths: a lack of advanced emergency breathing and communication devices in mines. The Eagle said miners aren’t given adequate training with breathing devices, called Self-Contained Self-Rescuers, and that the models in use in these mines have been rendered “obsolete.” In addition, the editorial said miners lack a system for two-way communication in mines. Legislation passed after the Sago Mine disaster of January 2006 has mandated the installation of such r]systems, but not until 2009, and the editorial said progress has been slow on that front. (Read more)

Meanwhile, a friend of one of the miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon mine confronted mine co-owner Bob Murray yesterday at a funeral for one of the three rescue workers killed at the mine, The Associated Press reports. The man "handed Murray a dollar bill" and said, "This is just to help you out so you don't kill him." AP reports, "Murray's head snapped back as if slapped." For video from CNN, click here.

The episode "revealed more than just the frustration of people in this mining community in central Utah's coal belt, where most still speak in whispers when criticizing the officials whose businesses pay their bills," AP reports. "Critics are now openly calling the mine a disaster waiting to happen and pointing fingers at Murray Energy Corp. and the federal government as the agents of the tragedy." (Read more)

Today, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Murray and the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration made a risky change to the mining plan of the previous owner, contrary to statements by Murray. MSHA approved the change in only seven business days, Robert Gehrke reports. (Read more)

As The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., went to press yesterday, the weekly newspaper looked far west to another coalfield, where rescue efforts continued at the Crandall Canyon Mine of Murray Energy Corp. in Utah. "We join with mining communities throughout the coalfields in praying for their rescue, even as time grinds away at the odds of achieving that outcome," the Eagle's editorial said. "Meanwhile, everyone anxious about the fate of the miners has had to endure a week of watching the mine’s owner, Robert Murray, demonstrating why he doesn’t deserve to be trusted with the facts, let alone the lives of thousands of people who depend on him for their livelihoods." (Photo of Murray by Ramin Rahimian of Reuters, via the Daily Yonder)

The editorial accused Murray of several misstatements. "Particularly galling to us were his off-the-wall rants about former federal mine safety officials Davitt McAteer and Tony Oppegard, both of whom we know well," who worked for the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the Clinton era and "have been among the most effective advocates miners have ever had – a distinction Bob Murray would no doubt claim for himself, but one that wouldn’t seem likely to withstand a moment’s scrutiny."

After reports that cast Murray as "bumptious but benevolent . . . his Berlin Wall of bluster began crumbling," the Eagle notes. "The first blows came from seismologists who reported that the 'seismic event' at Crandall Canyon was the violent cave-in itself, not an earthquake triggering it. Then MSHA contradicted him, confirming that Crandall Canyon was indeed doing retreat mining in the area of the cave-in. Then . . . came reports that miners who had been working in the area had been fearful about their safety."

The Eagle explained to its readers the differences in the mines they know and the one in Utah, and questioned MSHA's approval of retreat mining in an environment where high pressure and seismic activity can cause "'bumps' or 'bounces' in which the mine ribs or floor can suddenly give way with explosive force, firing chunks of coal like bullets and reducing solid coal pillars to rubble." It said the investigation of the accident should not be left to MSHA, but also include a group of outside experts. (Read more)

Opponents of mountaintop-removal coal mining like Sam Gilbert, above, "have found some allies in their fight, but most come from outside the Appalachian coalfield – activists, authors and journalists who write stories for national and regional newspapers and magazines," Mary Jo Shafer writes for The Mountain Eagle and other newspapers. "Much the same has been said in the legislatures of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, where efforts to limit mountaintop removal have failed or never gotten off the ground. So now the debate is moving to the halls of Congress, where opponents think they have a better chance for change."

Shafer's story includes polling done by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, showing that opinion about use and conservation of natural resources is deeply divided in southeastern Kentucky's Harlan and Letcher counties, part of the area where mountaintops are mined. The Eagle is published in Letcher County, where Gilbert lives. (The report does not name the two counties, but their inclusion was confirmed for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues by Mil Duncan of Carsey.)

Shafer, now the assistant city editor at The Anniston (Ala.) Star, did the report for the Institute as part of an internship to earn a master's degree in community journalism from the University of Alabama, through the Knight Community Journalism Fellows program, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Shafer's report also includes stories about a Kentucky legislator who is trying to limit mountaintop removal and also interviewed coalfield residents and an industry official who see mountaintop mining as a source of jobs and land for development or tourism. Another story examines the state of the United Mine Workers of America in Eastern Kentucky -- no working miners, but members in other fields and a strong heritage.

Paper's coverage helps capture escapee, holds Okla. authorities accountable

John Wylie, left, publisher of Oklahoma's weekly Oologah Lake Leader, was reading the nearby Vinita Daily Journal on June 5, and knew something was wrong when he saw that his neighbor editor was replying to a reader's complaint about a mental patient who had "walked away from a picnic." Wylie was in an excellent position to have heard about such an incident, and had heard nothing.

He did some digging and learned that the patient had walked away from a picnic at Oologah Lake, in the adjoining county, and that the escapee "had a two-state felony record including aggravated assault and battery with a deadly weapon, and had repeatedly threatened to kill law enforcement officers, jailers and friends," Wylie told Stan Schwartz of the National Newspaper Association. Escapee Randy Thweatt "had an escape history and had tried to kill a McCurtain County woman with a rifle."

"The only call the hospital made after discovering Thweatt was missing was to the McCurtain County Sheriff's Office in Idabel so it could warn the woman. In Rogers County, where Thweatt had escaped, authorities were not notified," Schwartz writes in the latest edition of NNA's Publisher's Auxiliary. Wylie broke the news, alerted a TV reporter in nearby Tulsa, and "Thweatt was apprehended by two Oklahoma Highway Patrol officers within 48 hours of the Leader's story," Schwartz writes. (For a PDF of the story's jump, click here.) "Oklahoma Rep. Chuck Hoskin, D-Vinta, issued a statement praising Wylie: 'I believe had it not been for the vigilance of the press -- in this case John Wylie of the Oologah Lake Leader and Lori Fullbright of KOTV-Tulsa -- this dangerous criminal may have remained at large.'"

Wylie reported the capture (story and jump) but the story wasn't over. He learned that "At that same lake just a week later, while Thweatt was still at large, more than 100 Girl Scouts held a campout," Schwartz writes. "It was also the 30th anniversary of the Locust Grove Girl Scout murders. Three young girls had been raped and killed at that site. The community still remembers that time." Click here for Wylie's story. Finally, the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health apologized for the incident, and put a six-month suspension on all outings, but when Wylie asked for a copy of the order, he found that it it wasn't in writing.

Wylie wrote an editorial about dealing with the mentally ill, and related his own experience: When he was a big-city reporter, he covered a mentally ill veteran "who held police at bay for a day with volleys from high-powered weapons," then "got past security at The Kansas City Star, and pled his case with a .45-caliber handgun aimed straight and true at our heart through the pocket of his raincoat." (Read more)

W.Va. publisher takes on other papers, local officials over public-notice ads

Scott Finn of West Virginia Public Radio reports, "There’s a fight going on for the hearts and minds of newspaper readers in Lincoln County – and that struggle could affect small newspapers all across West Virginia. Dan Butcher, a Lincoln County native who moved to Florida and made a fortune ... is challenging an established newspaper, the Lincoln Journal, with a start-up called the Lincoln Standard. He’s alleging that the Lincoln Journal and local politicians are in cahoots with each other – and taxpayers are footing the bill."

Newspapers are paid to print public-notice advertising for many legal matters, including a list of locals who haven't paid their taxes. The law calls for the list to be printed once; the Journal printed it more than once, and after the Standard pointed that out, the county got a refund. The law also "says you only have to print people’s names and what they owe," Finn reports. But Journal Publisher Tom Robinson "says it makes sense to print extra information -- like addresses -- especially in a county where more than 500 people are listed in the phonebook under the name 'Adkins'." A story by the Journal's Richard Tipton points out that the listings also included "property descriptions, rows of dots and ticket numbers."

Here's the larger issue: In West Virginia, rates for public-notice ads are set by law, according to a paper's circulation, at specific rates per word. Butcher's newspapers (he bought two more and started another in the area) recently noted that no one audits newspaper's certifications of their single-copy sales, and suggested that some papers are falsifying them in order to get higher rates for ads, because their percentage of household penetration -- 89 percent in one case -- is too high for counties with low income and education. Butcher was once a community newspaper executive for a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co. (Read the story.)

Gloria Flowers, executive director of the West Virginia Press Association, told Finn, "I do not feel there are any publishers in the state that fudge a tremendous amount on their circulation numbers." (Read more) Butcher says he was spurred to start his paper when the Journal wanted to charge a woman $59 to publish an article seeking sign-ups for the county's first youth soccer league. For his broader reflections on the how and why of his newspapers, which operate under the umbrella of West Virginia Standard, click here.

UPDATE: In its Aug. 9 edition, the Lincoln Standard reported on citizen protests at the county commission meeting and Butcher's federal-court lawsuit to remove the Lincoln Journal and the Lincoln News Sentinel as the county's newspapers of record. (Read more)

"The two Democratic front-runners have finally engaged, rather than simply allowing their staffs to go back-and-forth," NBC News Political Editor Chuck Todd says in this morning's "First Read," analyzing the back-and-forth that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had in the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa. (Can you name the four Quad Cities? See the bottom of this item for the answer.)

The Democratic candidates "tangled Tuesday in some of their sharpest terms yet over how to deal with countries that are antagonistic to the United States," reports the QCT's Ed Tibbetts. "In an interview with the Quad-City Times, U.S. Sen. Clinton, of New York, labeled as “irresponsible” and “naive” Obama’s statement that he was willing to meet, without precondition, the leaders of five countries hostile to the United States during the first year of his presidency. U.S. Sen. Obama, of Illinois, countered in a separate interview with the Times, accusing the Clinton campaign of hatching a “fabricated controversy” and suggesting that her position put her on the same track as the Bush administration."

Tibbets notes, "The exchange sprang from a questioner on a YouTube/CNN television debate Monday night asking whether Obama would be willing to meet in the first year of his presidency, without precondition, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Obama said he would." Clinton said she would not without an understanding of what any such meeting would be about, to avoid being used for propaganda.

NBC's Todd writes, "The only thing that strikes us odd about yesterday’s skirmish is that the candidates launched their attacks and counterattacks via such a small media venue (the Quad City Times). It's like two major deciding to go to war . . . over the Falkland Islands. Yesterday our producers in New Hampshire tried to get Clinton to say her criticism on camera and she demurred. And neither candidate granted an interview to any other media on this issue. If neither candidate chooses to put their words on camera today, does this mean the skirmish is over?" (Read more)

No, Chuck, it doesn't. Folks in Iowa do care about foreign policy and how the president deals with those who are our foes or cast themselves as such. What we see here is a measured escalation by the candidates, willing to go at it in print but not in the hotter medium of TV, or even radio. Sound bites hit harder. Hats off to Ed Tibbets for getting the story. (The QCs: Davenport and Bettendorf, Ia., and Moline and Rock Island, Ill.)

Sigma Delta Chi Awards have rural connections, including a cartoonist;
his publisher sees provocative editorial page as a way to boost circulation

There were several winners with rural connections at last night's Sigma Delta Chi awards banquet at the National Press Club in Washington, but none so rural as Mike Lester of the Rome News-Tribune in Georgia, circulation 18,500, who won the for editorial cartooning in 2006. Few papers with circulation under 20,000 have editorial cartoonists, a point noted by the judges, who said, "We applaud the Rome News-Tribune, a small newspaper, for having a full-time editorial cartoonist on staff."

Publisher Burgett Mooney III said in an interview that he wanted a cartoonist because he sees a "provocative" editorial page as a way to build and maintain circulation. "It gives us a place to really drive people to the newspaper," he said. Lester has been cartooning for the paper for five years. He was living in Rome and doing cartoons for an online news service until the dot-com bubble burst, then Mooney recruited him.

Lester tackles local, state, national and international topics, but said in an interview that he tries to make two of five cartoons a week have some local connection, often through a setting that is not identified but that local will recognize as a locale in the town of 35,000. Lester is generally conservative, but has an independent streak. The newspaper "tends to be what is considered conservative on economic matters and liberal on social issues," said the editorial-page editor, Pierre-Rene Noth.

The News-Tribune is part of News Publishing Co., which also publishes seven weeklies in northwest Georgia and Cherokee County, Alabama. The Sigma Delta Chi Awards were established in 1932 by the organization now known as the Society of Professional Journalists. The current program began in 1939, when Sigma Delta Chi presented its first Distinguished Service Awards. When Sigma Delta Chi changed its name to SPJ in the 1980s, the original name was retained for the awards and SPJ's foundation. Its board includes Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

Several awards were handed out last night for coverage of rural issues by urban media. Marx Arax of the Los Angeles Times won in the magazine-writing category for a series of stories on a California raisin picker. Todd Melby and Duane Richard of Chicago Public Radio won in radio documentary for "Flatlined: How Illinois Shortchanges Rural Students." Two awards were given for coverage of the Sago Mine disaster: to NBC Nightly News, for breaking news coverage on TV, and Mine Safety and Health News, for public service in newsletter journalism. For a complete list of this year's and past winners, click here.

The National Newspaper Association has announced the top placers in the general-excellence competition of its annual Better Newspaper Contest. The general-excellence awards are based on placement in detailed contest categories. NNA has about 2,500 members. More than 85 percent are weekly papers, but its contest also has categories for dailies. The first-, second- and third-place winners will be announced at the NNA Convention and Trade Show at the Waterside Marriott in Norfolk Sept. 25-30.

NNA listed six winners among non-dailies with circulation over 10,000, indicating that the judges gave three honorable mentions in the category as well as first, second and third places. The six are The Taos (N.M.) News; The Ellsworth (Me.) American; the San Francisco Bay Guardian; the Idaho Mountain Express of Sun Valley; The Independent Weekly of Lafayette, La.; and The Peninsula Gateway of Gig Harbor, Wash. We're most familiar with the Ellsworth paper, which acts like a daily; it covers the state capital and regularly does project reporting, currently on Maine's program to give all students laptop computers.

Among non-dailies with circulations of 6,000 to 9,999, two of the three winners are from favorite spots for recreation and second homes: The Eastern Edition of the Southampton Press, which serves the Hamptons area at the end of New York's Long Island; and the Jackson Hole News & Guide of Jackson, Wyo. The other winner was a perennial, the N'West Iowa Review of Sheldon, Ia. The paper carves its own niche in many ways. It is a regional weekly that is fanous for publishing scores of special sections each year, it doesn't put content online, it doesn't spell out "Northwest" in its name, and would like us to put "Review" in all capital letters, but we don't approve of such typographical tyranny. However, we do approve of the job that Peter Wagner, his sons and staff do with the Review and their local weekly, the Sheldon Mail-Sun.

The winners among non-dailies 3,000 to 5,999 include some well-known, quality papers: The Hutchinson (Minn.) Leader, the Litchfield (Minn.) Independent Review and the Hood River (Ore.) News. Under 3,000, the winners are the Curry County Reporter of Gold Beach, Ore.; The Community News of Aledo, Tex., just west of Fort Worth; and the Mount Desert Islander of Bar Harbor, Maine, a paper that has the same ownership as The Ellsworth American. They make quite a pair Down East.

A planned visit by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was the lead story in this week's edition of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., and a planned stop on the other side of Pine Mountain in Wise, Va., won Edwards a story in the Coalfield Progress of Norton, Wise County's main paper. The Big Sandy News, named for far Eastern Kentucky's main river, had three articles pegged to Edwards' planned stop in Prestonsburg, Ky., including an editorial headlined "Visit is welcome but could have negative impact." (MapQuest route map)

The Eagle said Edwards would be the first presidential candidate in Letcher County since Robert Kennedy came in 1968, as an "unannounced candidate" exploring poverty. Edwards is retracing the Appalachian part of Kennedy's route Wednesday to conclude a tour focused on poverty. The Eagle ran a large Associated Press color photo of Edwards on its front page, and continued its story to the editorial page, with a Tom Bethell photo of Kennedy in the town of Fleming-Neon. The paper noted that "President Lyndon Johnson declared the war on poverty in 1964 from Eastern Kentucky." The Big Sandy News, a regional, twice-weekly paper, noted with more specificity Johnson's visit "to Martin and Johnson counties," which it serves.

"While we're pleased that a presidential candidate is showing an interest in Eastern Kentucky, we're a little cautious about Edwards' visit since the theme of his tour is poverty," opined Tony Fyffe of the News, predicting "news footage of rundown homes, trash-ridden roads and streams, etc. . . . We don't deny that thousands upon thousands of Eastern Kentuckians live in poverty, but that's the one negative image the region and the state have had to overcome for decades. Forget about the wealth and all of the successes, Kentucky is nothing more than a poverty-stricken state, according to the national media. . . . If he wins the Democratic nomination and then the presidency, we hope Edwards returns to the region and puts his poverty action plan to work. Something tells us, however, that we'll be just a memory as soon as the tour bus leaves the region next Wednesday." The Big Sandy News has a subscription-only Web site.

Bonnie Bates of the Progress, citing a campaign release, says the former U.S. senator from North Carolina "will arrive in Wise sometime on July 17. . . . On July 18, Edwards will make an appearance at the county fairgrounds as volunteers prepare for this year’s Remote Area Medical health outreach, according to a media contact for Edwards’ campaign." Then Edwards will to to Whitesburg to answer questions from young people at the Appalshop media and arts center, and finally to Prestonsburg for a major speech at the old Floyd County Courthouse. The Progress has a subscription site. The Mountain Eagle is not on line.

Only two U.S. daily newspapers have "Lancaster" in their name, both serve many rural communities, and both are on Editor & Publisher magazine's annual list of "10 That Do It Right," papers "shattering the perception that this is a slow-moving dinosaur of an industry that refuses to adapt to rising needs and fresh opportunities," the magazine says. "This is never a '10 Best' list, thankfully, but rather a tip of the hat to a handful of news-papers of widely varying size that have made great strides, and can serve as a model, in one or more important areas: technology, marketing, reporting, design, online, photography, community awareness, diversity, advertising, even blogging and social networking." E&P says of the Lancaster papers:

"The Lancaster (Pa.) New Era was doing something right long before the past year. It won state awards, and was the rare afternoon daily with almost as much circulation as its morning counterpart. But the New Era, founded in 1877, received national attention when its coverage of last October's tragic shootings of five Amish schoolgirls won honors including the Pulliam prize and the Religion Communicators Council's Wilbur Award." Its circulation is 41,306; Lancaster's 2000 population was 56,348, the county's 470,658.

"Lancaster, Ohio, pop. 35,335, won't ever be confused with Manhattan. Columbus is the nearest big city, about 35 minutes away. Go north, says Lancaster Eagle-Gazette Publisher Rick Szabrak, and you're in new suburbia. Go south, and you're in farmland. So when Managing Editor Antoinette Taylor-Thomas is interviewing any young person — especially a candidate of color — she stays 'blatantly honest' about homey Lancaster, where racial and ethnic minorities make up just 5.3 percent of the community." The Gannett Co. Inc. paper's circulation is 13,166. (Details available on E&P's subscription-only Web site)

The Kentucky New Era, an 11,000-circulation daily in Hopkinsville, Ky., continues to take a leadership role in trying to get the U.S. Senate to consider a bill that would improve the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The paper published an editorial June 27 asking Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to get Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to release his “hold” on the bill, which the Justice Department opposes. Last week, when McConnell was in town, New Era reporter Joe Parrino buttonholed him on the subject.

“McConnell defended a move by his colleague Sen. Jon Kyl to hold back legislation on the release of public information," Parrino reported. "McConnell said he hadn’t yet discussed the matter directly with Kyl but understood his colleague’s reservation to be about the bill’s national-security implications. McConnell dismissed any notion that Kyl is trying to bury the bill.”

“All Sen. Kyl is saying is that we need to bring it up, debate it and he may need an amendment,” McConnell told Parrino. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not going to pass.” Parrino noted, “Kyl placed the hold secretly and owned up to it only when the Society of Professional Journalists queried every single U.S. senator about the matter.” (Read more)

Twelve editors of weekly newspapers won awards for editorial writing last night from the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, and one got the Golden Quill Award for best editorial of 2006. She is Lori Evans, editor and publisher of the Homer News in Alaska, a Morris Communications paper.

Evans' Sept. 14 editorial called for an end to unlimited property-tax exemptions for homeowners 65 and over on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage, where second homes and retirement homes are becoming popular -- so much so among senior citizens that their total property exemptions last year totaled $404 million, almost double the 2001 figure of $210 million. "Given the borough's changing demographics -- more seniors, fewer young families -- the exemption is just not fair," Evans wrote. The Borough Assembly didn't follow Evans' advice, but this fall voters will decide whether to put a $300,000 cap on each exemption.

Other "Golden Dozen" award winners at the ISWNE annual conference in Rapid City, S.D., were Steve Dills of the Sylvan Lake News in Alberta; Gary Sosniecki of The Vandalia Leader in Missouri; Luke Klink of The Star News in Medford, Wis.; Betta Ferrendelli of The Observer in Rio Rancho, N.M.; Dick Crocford of the Big Horn County News in Montana; Bill Schanen of the Ozaukee Press in Port Washington, Wis.; Charles Gay of the Shelton-Mason County Journal in Washington; John Wylie II of the Oologah Lake Leader in Oklahoma; Mike Buffington of the Jackson Herald in Jefferson, Ga.; Tim Waltner of the Freeman Courier in South Dakota; and Mo Mehlsak of The Forecaster in Falmouth, Me.

The Eugene Cervi Award for public service in community journalism went to Guy and Marcia Wood, publishers of the Sangre de Christo Chronicle in Angelfire, N.M., from 1984 to 2006. "They constantly battled village government to keep meetings and records open," the presentation said. The award recognizes consistently aggressive reporting and interpretation of local government, and reverence for language, for which the award's namesake is known. Cervi, of the Rocky Mountain Journal in Denver, died in 1970.

Al Smith walked down Main Street in Russellville, Ky., one Sunday morning in the late 1950s, past the Logan County Courthouse, where the county singing convention was in full sing. He thought for a moment that he belonged there, but kept walking, down the street to the bootlegger -- and, perhaps, to oblivion.

It was a small piece of a life's journey that he recounted for the first National Rural Assembly tonight, as he accepted one of its six Rural Hero awards for his work in journalism -- most recently the establishment of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.

Smith, now 80, never joined the singers, but he did kick liquor, with the help of the people in Logan County, and his journalism career began looking up. He began writing articles for big-city papers, and "It was soon evident I could go back to the city," he said. But then he realized: "These people took me in when I didn't have a friend . . . and I decided I'd stay with them."

His decision was confirmed by the woman he soon married. Martha Helen Smith told him that living in a rural town was OK "as long as that city-limit sign doesn't obscure your vision of what lies beyond the border." And after he built a small chain of rural newspapers and sold it, that outlook helped inspire the Institute, which helps rural journalists define the public agenda in their communities -- including reporting and commentary on state, regional and national issues that have a local impact on such things as education, health care, the economy and the environment.

The idea was planted by Smith's friend Rudy Abramson, a former Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and found support in 2001 from Dr. Lee Todd, who had just become president of UK. "Without Todd's acceptance of our vision, it never would have worked," Smith told the National Rural Assembly. The Institute operated on an ad hoc basis until 2004, when grants enabled UK to hire Al Cross as its director. It recently held a National Summit on Journalism in Rural America and presented programs in Iowa and Tennessee, but its work remains grounded in Kentucky and Central Appalachia. It works with policy experts like those at the Rural Assembly to illuminate issues for rural journalists. Smith saluted the work of the advocates for rural America and said, "I'm just happy to be part of the choir."

Other rural heroes recognized at the Assembly in Chantilly, Va., were Bill Bynum of Jackson, Miss., founder of the Enterprise Corp. of the Delta, for leadership in investment and entrepreneurship; Dr. Forrest Calico of Stanford, Ky., former director of the Appalachian Regional Health Corp., for health; Elouise Cobell of the Blackfeet Nation in South Dakota, for advocacy; Sharon King of New York City, president of the F.B. Heron Foundation, for philanthropy; and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., for government. Details? Click here.

The National Rural Assembly is designed to "strengthen rural America by giving its leaders a platform to be heard, raising the visibility of rural issues, organizing a national network of rural interests, and developing specific rural policy initiatives," says the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the chief co-convener, with the Ford Foundation. It continues today, then tomorrow with a congressional hearing on rural issues. (Read more)

Iowa journalist Douglas Burns writes in the Iowa Independent, an online news forum, that Arizona Sen. John McCain was unaware that rural America is bearing a disproportionate burden of the fighting and casualties in Iraq. “Most of us in western Iowa, regardless of position on the war or political affiliation, just know this,” Burns, a reporter and columnist for the Daily Times Herald in Carroll, Iowa, wrote June 3. “We see it in our small towns, anecdotally — and The Associated Press and other reliable sources have documented it. . . . Barack Obama gets this. John McCain doesn’t. I asked them both the same question, and was stunned with the response from McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona an GOP candidate for the presidency.”

In an interview, McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, told Burns, “I don’t think the numbers bear out that assertion. I think they’re from all over America. They’re not from the wealthiest Americans. I will admit that. I have no statistic that indicates they’re mostly from rural America.” Burns notes, “The premise of the question was not that rural kids are doing "most" of the fighting but rather a "disproportionate" amount of it. McCain should be angry about this gulf in sacrifice, which has some roots in a socio-economic status.”

In contrast, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama showed familiarity with the subject when Burns asked him about it. “One of the things I’ve been distressed about is the way folks in southern Illinois and rural western Iowa, that those are the folks that are disproportionately affected,” Obama told Burns in an interview in Denison, Iowa., left, in photo from the Daily Yonder. Burns interviewed McCain in LeMars. (Read more) For background on the casualty pattern, click here. For the conservative Heritage Foundation's take on the issue, courtesy of the Daily Yonder, click here.

June 21, 2007

Montana Journalism Review: The Challenges of Rural Journalism

Much of latest issue of the Montana Journalism Review, including the title above, is devoted to rural journalism, and we're happy to highlight it here because the state has innovators in the field, three of whom attended our National Summit on Journalism in Rural America this spring -- Keith Graham of the University of Montana, Courtney Lowery of the online news source New West and John Q. Murray of the Clark Fork Chronicle, in photo at right. They and their ideas are among the featured articles in the review.

Graham and Lowery started Rural News Network in 2006 when they saw a need for a rural news connection and got it funded by the New Voices program of J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism. The network began in Lowery's hometown of Dutton, Mont., which lost its newspaper several years ago. "Lowery and Graham hope the RNN Web site will allow people in Dutton to publish their own news," Eleena Fikhman reports. For her interview with Graham and Lowery, click here.

In Murray's piece, which we recommend you read, he analyzes the challenges facing newspapers in rural areas that have seen "traditional natural resource industries decline and families move away in search of work." He is assembling a Corporation for Public Community Newspapers, "an independent non-profit organization with a dues-paying membership. Members attend regular meetings to: (1) review the progress of the local community newspaper toward its agreed-upon goals; (2) identify special reporting projects that the newspaper should undertake; and (3) vote to provide funding for specific special projects. . . .The supplemental funding provided by the nonprofit means the newspaper can increase its news hole to provide that coverage, regardless of the amount of advertising sold that week. The nonprofit is its own distinct organization, completely separate from the for-profit newspaper, but the two enter into a binding contract that gives the nonprofit full budget authority over the special projects. The members of the nonprofit vote on the special projects and provide the funding. The newspaper is free to turn down the project and the funding. In that case, the nonprofit can seek to contract with freelancers or other citizen journalists to produce the special projects. Conversely, the newspaper can choose to implement all special projects recommended by the non-profit, even if they are not fully funded." (Read more)

When the judge in a school-funding lawsuit between the school board and commissioners of Pitt County, N.C., slapped a gag order on the elected officials and refused to hear a TV station's appeal, he probably thought he had given the station the old stiff-arm. But even after the trial, WNCT-TV pressed the case in an effort to make sure it didn't happen again. Yesterday, the state Court of Appeals said the judge was wrong.

We learned about this from Al's Morning Meeting, the daily online column by Al Tompkins of The Poynter Institute. He writes, "Over the last several years, many journalism executives, print and broadcast, have told me how difficult it is these days to get corporate backing to take on a legal fight like this, especially when the decision has more to do with principle and precedent than anything else. I wish journalism organizations would pick more legal fights on behalf of the public." This case set a statewide precedent.

Tompkins interviewed WNCT News Director Melissa Preas, right, by e-mail. "We really felt this was wrong on every level. particularly when dealing with two public entities fighting over public money," she said. "If we didn't pursue this appeal, then in our opinion that just left the door wide open for it to continue to happen." She said Media General, the station's owner, was very supportive. To read the interview, click here.

Larry Webster is a lawyer in Pikeville, Ky. To call him a maverick Republican would be understatement, and such does not become him. You will not find understatement in his "Red Dog" newspaper column, named for acid drainage from coal mines. He's often over the top, and sometimes bewildering, but his latest take on the presidential race has some vintage paragraphs. Here are three:

"If we all stick together and get us a smooth actor who talks the talk to be elected president, just maybe Keith Whitley's little widder woman [country singer Lorrie Morgan] will be the first lady. Fred Thompson, in a gesture of self-sacrifice, will give up being Paul Harvey's successor in radio riches and give up pretending to be someone else on television in order to save this country from the ruin of having to pick between two New Yorkers.

"One is the Hall Monitor Girl who slept once with Bill Clinton. You remember the hall monitor girl with the fluorescent crosses swathing her bosom holding up her little sign and ordering you around. She had no principles, but, to remain hall monitor girl, fought her way right to the middle of the pile, no matter what it was a pile of. If there is a God, He will spare us eight years of having to stay off television to keep from seeing her every night at suppertime. That would be torture.

"Upon which the other New Yorker would approve given that he believes in torture as a technique in international relations. She is the Hall Monitor Girl and he is the Call Monitor Boy. He goes by "Rudy," so as not to be confused with the red-nosed Rudolph, who at least knows how to lead. We do not want him to play in our reindeer games. Rudy will lead us forward on our current path to a security state ruled by a single person who claims two things, one, that while we are at war nobody has any rights, and two, that we are in a permanent war." (Column not available online)

One of the most important things rural news media can do for their readers, viewers and listeners is connect them to the world at large and help them understand the local impact of faraway events. Brad Martin of the Hickman County Times in Centerville, Tenn., did that this week with an editorial titled "War at home."

“As June arrives and you prepare for another ballgame with your kids, here’s a thought worth remembering: Soldiers are still preparing to go to the war zone known as Iraq. Soldiers from Hickman County,” Martin began, following that with the latest list of seven names, all volunteers for the assignment. Such reminders are important in a nation where no broad sacrifice has been required for the Iraq War, which has a low profile.

Martin addressed the war's controversial nature: “Go ahead, argue politics -- that Bush is whacked and Congress has no guts and things aren’t getting better. Or maybe they are and the media just isn’t telling us, and terrorism will soon be eradicated from the Earth, so help me God. Don’t do it on the soldiers’ nickel, though.”

The key to the 5,800-circulation weekly's editorial is John M. Wilson, family-assistance specialist for the Army National Guard's 771st Maintenance Company, based in Centerville. Referring to the seven men's volunteering to go to Iraq, most for return trips, he told Martin, “They’d rather do that than try to find a job here. It’s difficult to find a job here.” From there, Martin made another connection, to the economic needs of the 22,500 people in Hickman County and the responsibility of local officials to address them.

He noted that a manufacturing plant, “a 33-year cornerstone of this county’s economy — will let all of their 68 employees go home, starting in July, and most of them still need to work. Where do they go in a county where 60 percent leave for elsewhere every morning?” Centerville, population 3,800, is 60 miles southwest of downtown Nashville. The Times is not online, but the editorial is posted on our site. To read it, click here.

Illinois reporter knows how to tell story of broadband access, or lack of it

Jeremy Pelzer of the State Capitol Bureau of the State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., circulation 55,000, knows how to sharply illustrate the lack of broadband in rural areas. Check out this lede: "When Guy Sternberg wants to open an e-mail attachment from friends, it helps if he's hungry."

Sternberg, of Menard County, explains in terms of kilobytes: "If we try to send things back and forth that are attached documents and so forth that are over three or four hundred K or five hundred K at most, I just can't even open them, I'll hit 'Open,' I'll go eat lunch and to come back before I get it done."

Pelzer also cites a very illustrative nugget of data, or forecast data: "Dial-up service has become increasingly inadequate as Web sites and Internet applications, particularly video, require unprecedented amounts of bandwidth. By 2010, the Web traffic generated by only 20 homes will be equal to the information transmitted over the entire Internet in 1995, according to Cisco Systems."

And no story on broadband access is complete without touching on these subjects: "Many rural Illinois advocates worry that areas of the country that don't have affordable high-speed Internet will lose jobs and people to cities that do. . . . Satellite Internet service offers faster speeds, but the needed satellite dish and equipment usually cost hundreds of dollars, and monthly subscriptions often cost twice as much as ground-based broadband. Those prices are often too steep, said Rex Duncan, executive director of ConnectSI, an initiative seeking to help Internet providers extend broadband access throughout Southern Illinois." And an online commenter on the story noted, "Satellite Internet also has limitations on bandwidth usage." Weather can also be a problem. Click here for the story, and here for a sidebar on state efforts to extend access.

Lawrence K. “Lou” Emerson, former co-owner and editor of two weekly newspapers in Northern Virginia, will receive the George Mason Award, the highest honor presented by the Virginia Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, at the chapter's annual banquet Thursday, June 7. The