Good work in rural journalism

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.

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.

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 award is presented for significant, lasting contribution to Virginia journalism.

Emerson, who founded The Fauquier Citizen in Warrenton in 1989 and The Culpeper Citizen 14 years later, is a longtime advocate of open government. He "spearheaded a successful legal challenge against the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors over an illegal closed meeting. The court case went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court, which issued a landmark ruling last year concerning reasons for, and content of, closed meetings," reports the Virginia Press Association, in which he remains active.

Awards are old hat for Emerson, who sold his papers to Times Community Newspapers in January 2006. The Fauquier Citizen consistently won top honors from VPA, and in 2005 the Inland Press Foundation named it the best weekly of its size in the U.S. Last year, he received the D. Lathan Mims Award, VPA’s highest individual honor for an editor. In March, he won the association's First Amendment Award. He and his wife, Ellen, operate Emerson2, a newspaper consulting business in Warrenton.

The awards banquet will be held at the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Hanover Production Facility in Mechanicsville. For more information about the banquet, click here.

A greater share of Alabama citizens have been deployed to Iraq than those of any state except Texas, so the Knight Community Journalism Fellows in the University of Alabama’s master’s degree program at The Anniston Star did a large-scale reporting project examining the Alabama Guard and how its members, their families and the state have been affected by the war. The project, which included a poll of Guard members, ran in the Star yesterday and is a fine example of how community journalism can bring home big issues that come from far away but have a local impact. (Photo of Jim Priest of the 2025th Transportation Company, in training in Alabama, by Joel Hume)

“Soldiers say those living outside the war do not – possibly cannot – notice the change it has brought to thousands of Alabama homes and businesses. In six years, it has slipped into churches and schools. It has left its mark in pharmacies and hospitals. With all but two of Alabama’s 67 counties hosting Guard units, the war is an ongoing epic for the entire state. It’s one that Guard family members can’t turn off,” Markeshia Ricks writes in the lead story, with contributions from Amanda DeWald and Mary Jo Shafer. Ricks also wrote a story about the help some soldiers will need to recover from their experiences, and one of seven profiles of individual soldiers.

The survey of Guard members “uncovered feelings of a Guard stretched past its intent, past its training and recruitment abilities. Their ideas about readjusting to civilian life, and why they joined the Guard in the first place, shift as the war on terror drags on,” Ricks writes. Here are some survey findings in her story:

“More than half of the 420 Guard members surveyed have been deployed to Iraq for at least a one-year tour. Another 33 percent have been to Afghanistan. . . . Of those who have been deployed, almost 66 percent reported coming under mortar attack, machine gun fire or being in vehicles blown up by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. . . . 85 percent said people were "very appreciative" or "somewhat appreciative" of their job. . . . Though the U.S. Department of Defense has had difficulty recruiting and retaining soldiers, on average these members have spent at least four years in the Guard. More than half say they will re-enlist. . . . Only 18 percent reported that they’d experienced a change in employment because of their Guard service. Of those who had a change, 24 percent had been deployed for combat.” (Read more)

A story by Shafer examines equipment shortages in Guard units and brings it home: “The 167th Infantry Battalion of Talladega County should have 42 M-60 machine guns,” she writes. “It has seven.”

In a story headlined "The war at home," Joan Garrett writes of the trials and tribulations of Guard families. One wife, Suzy Sexton, “has learned to love a changed man. She’s learned to make muted sounds and speak careful words. She’s learned to live through her husband’s nightmares.”

Nevertheless, for the first time in 14 years, the the Alabama guard grew last year, thanks to strong enlistments. DeWald interviewed administrators and enlistees like Priest to find out why. Click here for her story.

DeWald and the university's Dr. Ed Mullins teamed up on a story about how Guard members balance tasks and training for home and abroad: “About 60 percent worry that war duty compromises their abilities on the home front "seriously or somewhat." Frustration rises like steam from many of the comments.”

You might have expected Tom Dewell, co-editor of the weekly Jackson Hole News & Guide, circulation 10,000, to take advantage of a trip to the Washington, D.C., area to interview Vice President Dick Cheney, perhaps the most powerful resident of Teton County, Wyoming. Dewell did that, after attending an American Press Institute seminar last week, but before the seminar he snagged a briefer interview with Cheney's opposite number, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and did a story on her, too. (Official White House photo, by David Bohrer)

The Pelosi material provided useful counterpoint in the Cheney story, which began,“Vice President Dick Cheney, in a White House interview Friday, criticized the Democrats’ redeployment strategy for Iraq and explained the underpinnings of the Bush administration’s surge plan. In a 20-minute conversation in his West Wing office, Cheney also addressed the creep of gas development toward northwest Wyoming, supported the Wild and Scenic designation for Snake River headwaters and offered his views on global warming.”

That was a good mix of topics, from international to local. The Pelosi material in the story offered counterpoint to Cheney's views on Iraq. “Pelosi explained the redeployment strategy she and her colleagues have offered,” Dewell wrote. “The speaker wants to extract American troops from the middle of a civil war, have them protect U.S. interests in the region, fight terrorists and protect the embassy.” Pelosi told him, “It’s a mess there now whether we stay or whether we go. It’s a mess.”

“Cheney countered that U.S. forces must remain in the country to fight terrorists who have decided to take on the U.S. military in the Middle East,” Dewell wrote. The story ended with a verbatim excerpt of the interview. A White House transcript of the full 20-minute interview is posted on the paper's Web site. The paper's package also included a personality-oriented sidebar, headlined "Family, friends sustain Cheney's career" and a "Reporter's Notebook" about Dewell's experiences at the White House. Here are excerpts:

"For my trip to the White House I had only one outfit choice: The blue suit I wore to my wedding rehearsal dinner and the one I wear to funerals and weddings. For the record: I am not wearing my most expensive suit, my Orvis, Simms, Cloudveil fishing gear. . . . I ask if I can go to the bathroom but not because I have to go. My palms and fingers sweat from excitement and feel somehow greasy. I don’t want to shake Vice President Cheney’s hand and have him think I just finished a plate of baby back ribs." (Read more)

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced today the first grants in its Knight News Challenge, a five-year contest offering $25 million in awards for ideas and projects that use digital news or information to build and bind community in specific geographic areas. As Eric Newton, the foundation’s vice president of journalism programs, describes it, the contest combines “nerds, news and neighborhoods.” And Knight's “neighborhoods” includes some rural places.

The largest grant with rural impact is $885,000 to Richard Anderson, right, president and owner of VillageSoup Inc., a company that provides places for residents to learn, share and shop in their neighborhoods or towns. The grant will be used to create an open-source version of VillageSoup’s successful community news software, combining professional journalism, blogs, citizen journalism, online advertising and “reverse publishing” from online to print. Anderson says his goal is “Turning independent weekly newspaper companies and entrepreneurs into an imposing, lively, worldwide creative energy that is competitive with media company chains.” Before establishing VillageSoup, Anderson spent five years teaching and 29 years developing and publishing elementary and high school textbooks. He and his wife Sandy live in Camden, Maine.

The next largest grant with rural impact is $244,000 to Ethan Zuckerman, left, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. With Rebecca MacKinnon, he is the cofounder of Global Voices (www.globalvoicesonine.org), an international community of bloggers and citizen journalists that has introduced readers around the world to the brilliant, funny, insightful and touching voices of bloggers from developing nations. The grant will be used to introduce thousands of new developing world bloggers to the world, helping students, journalists, activists and people from rural areas to the blogosphere. “It’s becoming clear that the world is listening, so now we’re trying to get new groups of people talking.”

A grant with potential rural impact is $222,000 to Lisa Williams, right, founder of Placeblogger, the largest live site of local weblogs and of H2Otown, a nationally recognized citizen journalism site and online community for Watertown, Mass. The grant will help make it easier for people to find hyperlocal news and information about their city or neighborhood through promotion of “universal geotagging’’ in blogs. “Placeblogger wants to make it so simple to know what’s fresh, interesting and compelling about where you are right now, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it,” she says. For the Knight Foundation news release about the program and the largest grants, click here. For the program's home page, click here.

Among eight winners of $15,000 News Challenge grants for blogging is G. Patton “Pat” Hughes of neomax.com LLC and Paulding.com, a hyperlocal news site for Paulding County, Georgia. (county seat, Dallas, just west of Cobb County and Marietta). While editing a local weekly newspaper, Hughes saw the opportunity for the site and obtained the domain name in 1997. The site reaches about 30 percent of local households. It aims to involve the community, offering tutorials on how to upload images and avoid libel. “Because of the passion and dedication required to create a hyperlocal media site,” Hughes says, “My goal is to classify this work as an art form – and make my art worth something in my lifetime.” For a complete list of all News Challenge winners, biographies and project descriptions, click here.

The second round's application period begins July 1. The largest grant in the first round, $5 million, went to Chris Csikszentmihályi and Henry Jenkins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the Center for Future Civic Media, a leadership project designed to encourage community news experiments and new technologies and practices. “We are moving to a Fifth Estate where everyone is able to pool their knowledge, share experience and expertise, and speak truth to power,” says Csikszentmihályi (pronounced Cheek-sent-me-hi). He has worked in the intersection of new technologies, politics, media and the arts for 15 years, lecturing, working to create new technology that embodies a social agenda. For example, he designed his piece “Afghan Explorer” to defend the First Amendment by creating a tele-operated robot reporter to bypass American military censorship. Jenkins is author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, the newest books of which include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

Nieman Foundation names 30 fellows, a few with rural connections

One rural journalist and one who works at a newspaper with a large rural circulation have been named Nieman Fellows at Harvard University. Other fellows plan research that could have rural resonance.

Dean Miller, right, executive editor of The Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho, circulation 24,000, will study the role of faith and pluralism in American communities. Miller is the Donald W. Reynolds Nieman Fellow in Community Journalism, funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. Alicia Anstead, a reporter with the Bangor Daily News in Maine, circulation 62,000, will study the imaginative, political and historical underpinnings of art in a consumer culture. Anstead is the Arts & Culture Nieman Fellow.

Fellows with research projects that could involve rural areas in the United States include Stuart Watson, an investigative reporter for WCNC-TV in Charlotte, who will study criminal sentencing inequities and factors influencing the disparities in criminal sentencing, to gain a better understanding of the connections between crime and punishment; Walter Watson, senior supervising producer for National Public Radio, who will study how the new media will affect communities that lack access to the changing way news and information are delivered; Dallas Morning News reporter Joshua Benton, who will explore the impact of school rating systems such as the No Child Left Behind Act on classroom instruction and the effects they can have on the way schools operate; and Kate Galbraith, freelance correspondent, who has written for The Economist, The New York Times and The Boston Globe, who will study how government policy fosters or impedes the development of alternative-energy technologies such as solar power or bio-fuels.

Half of each year's fellows come from outside the U.S., and some have research projects that involve rural areas. The most notable is Siew Ying Leu, a Malaysian who is Guangzhou correspondent for the South China Morning Post and will study the role China’s rural population will play in the political and economic future of the country. Leu is the Barry Bingham Jr. Nieman Fellow, a fellowship named for the former editor and publisher of The Courier-Journal in Louisville. For the full list of fellows, click here.

May 22, 2007

So, you write what seems to be a routine story about a council meeting, and two guys beat you unconscious. That's what happened to Centerville Daily Iowegian Managing Editor Dan Ehl last September. On May 11, his attackers were each sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to willful injury.

Wade Adams, 27, and Jeffery Horn, 26, punched, kicked and stomped Ehl, who had written what he called a routine city council story that included a discussion of Adams' liquor license. The attack occurred outside a Centerville bar. Ehl suffered a broken leg and facial injuries. He blamed the attack on the story.

“I’m glad justice has been done,” Ehl told the Ottumwa Courier, a sister paper. “I don’t think anyone should be ambushed and beaten no matter what their profession is. I know it got more attention because I’m a journalist, but I don’t think that should happen to anyone.” (Read more) For the 2,800-circulation Daily Iowegian's story about the attackers' plea on its editor, click here.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has mended fences with an Iowa farm couple, and their local newspaper editor was the only journalist present for the reconciliation. He apologized in person to Deb and Jerry VonSprecken Monday for his campaign's cancellation of an event at their farm, on grounds that they weren't wealthy enough to be affected by the federal inheritance tax, which he wanted to campaign against. (Photo: Deb VonSprecken holds a young calf as Giuliani feeds it.)

“I found out what had happened a couple of days ago,” Giuliani told Michelle Phillips of the weekly Anamosa-Journal Eureka, who broke the first story and was the only journalist who spoke to the candidate during his makeup visit. “It was reported to me that we canceled an event and the family was upset. It should have never happened. It’s my campaign and I take full responsibility. This is not the way I think this should’ve been handled or people should be treated.” (Read more)

The cattle farmers turned down Giuliani's request to reschedule the event on their property, but Deb VonSprecken agreed to be his campaign chairman for Jones County, just east of Cedar Rapids.

Giuliani's "still got some explaining to do" about the inheritance tax, The Des Moines Register said in an editorial. "The Giuliani campaign would have found it nigh on to impossible to turn up an example of an Iowa family that is severely affected by the tax. There are many myths about the estate tax. One of them is that heirs have to sell off the family farm to pay the inheritance tax. In fact, the estate tax kicks in only after the first $2 million in the estate's value, which misses most family farms unless they happen to be owned by the very wealthy. Indeed, last year, 99 percent of estates paid no estate tax at all, and the exemption is scheduled to go up to $3.5 million ($7 million for a couple) in '09." (Read more)

The Todd County Standard of Elkton, Ky., doesn't have a Web site. It has less need for one than most papers, because hardly anyone in the Southern Kentucky county has high-speed Internet, or broadband. And the weekly, owned and edited by Ryan Craig, did a bang-up job of putting that issue on the county's public agenda recently, with three A-1 stories and a sidebar by reporter Melony Leazer. We've scanned and posted these stories so you can read them and use as examples for your own reporting and writing.

Click here for the top of the front page, with an excellent graphic and the beginning of the main story. Click here for the bottom, with the start of two more stories. Click here for jumps and sidebar.

The Montana Supreme Court ruled last week that the Cut Bank Pioneer Press “has the right to see documents dealing with the punishment given to Cut Bank High School students involved in a BB gun shooting,“The Associated Press reported. School trustees had withheld the information, citing privacy.

“The discipline imposed by the board on students of the school, particularly students involved in potentially injurious actions, is a matter of public concern,” the unanimous court said. “The board’s assertion that unidentified students have a privacy interest in the disciplinary measures imposed upon them which would prohibit a general report to the public about the board’s action in the matter is unpersuasive.”

The ruling also clarified a Supreme Court decision last year "that endangered the public and press’s ability to sue school boards for open-meetings violations," AP reported. "The Montana School Boards Association told school boards around the state that the previous decision, in which a woman unsuccessfully challenged the openness of a Darby School District meeting to hire a superintendent, could make it difficult for a newspaper to show any “personal stake in the decision of a school board.”

The court touched on that case, Fleenor v. Darby School District, in saying that the 1,600-circulation weekly, which claimed a personal interest in the records, had a right to the information. The court said in Board of Trustees v. Pioneer Press, “The interest was personal to Pioneer because the records were necessary for Pioneer’s work.” The paper had argued that the public needs to know how officials are dealing with such violent situations.

“School trustees, who handed out the punishment behind closed doors, argued that the privacy interests of the students trumped the public’s right to know,” AP reported. “A lower court sided with the school district, arguing that federal privacy law restricted release of the disciplinary records. But the newspaper never requested the names of the students, the high court pointed out. It only wanted to know the punishment. And the state Supreme Court said the Montana Constitution holds sway in the matter. The court also dismissed an argument from the school district that the newspaper already knew the names of the students involved based on gossip around town. The trustees had said newspaper editor LeAnne Kavanagh could piece together the punishment handed down with the names of the students she knew were involved.”

“The identifying information in Kavanagh’s prior possession was disclosed to her, not by governmental action, but by small-town rumor mill,” Rice wrote. “Although possibly a superior conduit of information, such revelations do not factor into the constitutional balancing test nor mitigate the government’s constitutional obligations.” (Read more, via the First Amendment Center)

Rudy Giuliani, whose successes as New York mayor included cleaning up Times Square and 42nd Street, is suffering some embarrassment today because of a mistake his campaign made in dealing with some folks on another 42nd Street, near Olin, Iowa. That's in scenic Jones County, where Grant Wood of "American Gothic" fame grew up.

After Deb VonSprecken, in photo at right, contributed to Guiliani's campaign, it called her, asking her to host an event. “We started making phone calls. We got the sheriff and fire department and Olin school was going to let out early. We were also expecting kids from the Anamosa school,” Jerry told the weekly Anamosa Journal-Eureka. “Deb even went around and personally invited people.” They moved cattle to another field to make room, and invited relatives from out of state.

But then the campaign called and asked their assets, and when told how modest they were, it called the event off. “Tony [Delgado, of the campaign] said, ‘I’m sorry, you aren’t worth a million dollars and he is campaigning on the death tax right now,” Deb VonSprecken told Journal-Eureka Editor Michelle Phillips, who got the story in her May 3 edition and headlined it "Guiliani snubs Jones County." Click here to read it. (The "death tax," of course, is the federal inheritance tax -- opponents of which often cite family farmers as victims but have short of evidence that the tax, with large exemptions, really affects farmers.)

Phillips wrote that Deb VonSprecken “got a call from New York later the same day asking her to introduce Giuliani at a rally in Cedar Rapids, also scheduled for May 4. They offered her one-on-one time with Giuliani and to have her photo taken with him. ‘My feeling is that they’re trying to cover their butts,’ said Jerry.” Deb said, “I may go and give him a piece of my mind, but I’m not going to introduce him.”

That's some pretty hot political material, but it seems that few if any people outside Jones County heard about it until Thursday afternoon, when Greg Sargent of The Horse's Mouth political blog called VonSprecken and the Journal-Eureka to confirm what he called the "unbelievable story" posted it on his blog at TalkingPointsMemo.com. Sargent quoted Deb VonSprecken: “I told [Rudy's aide] from day one that we were poor folks, just trying to scrape by. ...When they [asked us to host the event], I was just ecstatic. We were honored. It was an honor and a privilege. We worked so hard. ...Why would Rudy Giuliani not come speak to the average Americans that live in eastern Iowa, instead of qualifying you as a millionaire before he will show up to your place?”

The blogosphere erupted, and the Des Moines Register picked up on the story. Across the top of this morning's front page was a headline reading "We're not rich enough for Giuliani" with the subhead, "Olin farmers say he pulled out of event at their home after checking their assets." The Register story had some problems. The main head was not supported by a quote in the story, and you had to get to the jump before the inheritance tax was mentioned. It mistakenly attributed Deb VonSprecken's quote above to "her local newspaper" and did not mention the Journal-Eureka -- whose efforts deserved mention. So we do.

20 years after he left, friends and colleagues remember a great rural editor

Steve Lowery, former editor and publisher of newspapers in Central Kentucky and a former president of the Kentucky Press Association, died April 29 at his home near Westciffe, Colo. The coroner said Lowery died of natural causes. He was 54. Lowery first made his mark as publisher of The Lebanon Enterprise, now edited by his daughter, Stevie L. Daugherty. Last night, Lowery's colleagues, friends and family gathered to remember him.

Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and a longtime friend of Lowery, told the crowd at Bosley Funeral Home, "The best rural editors play two institutional roles: that of the journalist, independent to a fault, and the role of civic leader. You must be willing to call them as you see them, show courage and speak truth to power. But whatever passion you show in criticizing what you think is wrong, you must show that same passion in promoting what you think is right.

"Steve did both -- and he did it, to be frank, in a place where that may have been a little more difficult than most. He held up a mirror to Lebanon and Marion County. He helped this place face its problems, and in doing so he helped it realize its potential. He was always urging me to come to [Marion County Country] Ham Days, and always disappointed in those years I didn't show up. He wanted me to see Lebanon at its best, and he wanted this place, his adopted home, to be its best.

"I believe that when Steve left The Lebanon Enterprise 20 years ago -- and the fact we have such a good crowd tonight is testimony to his impact -- that he left Lebanon and Marion County a better place, and he could take some credit for that. That could be a great epitaph for any newspaper editor, but especially one in a small town." To read the rest of Cross's remarks, and a story about Lowery by Central Kentucky News-Journal Publisher Richard Robards, click here.

May 7, 2007

Kansas newspaper's survival in doubt despite extraordinary efforts

The efforts to keep the Kiowa County Signal going (see item from Sunday) after the tornado that devastated Greensburg, Kan., have gained attention from Editor & Publisher and the Community Journalism Interest Group of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

"Despite having its offices flooded and portions of its roof torn off, the three-person staff of the 1,200-circulation paper has kept up with the story all weekend, posting stories and photos to its Web site, as well as planning a six-page special edition slated for later today," Joe Strupp reports for E&P from New York.

"I have been devastated by what I have seen, and am wondering if I still have a job," Editor Mark Anderson told Strupp. "I have not been as affected by it as [local residents]. But knowing so many of them, I feel like I owe it to them to try to give them perspective." Anderson, who lives 30 miles away in Pratt and has run the paper for three years, said he didn't know if it would survive, since its readers have been displaced and its advertisers are out of business. He is the sole news employee of the weekly, which is owned by GateHouse Media and is a satellite of the daily Pratt Tribune. His wife, Laurie Anderson, is the advertising manager.

Anderson spoke to Strupp "via cell phone as he drove in slow traffic along State Highway 54 Monday morning along with hundreds of others seeking to return to the community that has gained international attention following the tragic tornado," Strupp writes. "It was unbelievable devastation, the whole scene," Anderson said. "I had taken pictures Thursday of two ribbon-cuttings for new businesses that no longer exist." He said he started taking pictures immediately, "but I didn't want to interview people because it had been so much for them. It has been hard for me to deal with it objectively." (Read more)

The Community Journalism Interest Group is using its blog to solicit help for the Signal. On the blog, Stephanie Mulholland of the Kansas Press Association reports that the paper has computers, "but no power is expected for a few weeks. A generator may be on its way." The KPA president, executive director and technical consultant are helping with coverage in Greensburg today, repprts Peggy Kuhr, Knight Chair on Press, Leadership and Community at the University of Kansas.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Tornado levels Kansas town and newspaper office, but not the newspaper

What do you do when your town is leveled and your weekly newspaper's office is destroyed? The Kiowa County Signal in Greensburg, Kan., put whatever news it could on its Web site as soon as it could, and asked citizens to post photos and videos online. The work was done with the help of its parent paper, the daily Pratt Tribune, circulation 2,100. Both papers are owned by GateHouse Media. The papers "were not set up to file stories remotely," and because "the Greensburg office was destroyed . . . nobody had login information for the web site," Howard Owens, GateHouse's director of digital publishing, wrote on his blog. GateHouse moved the site to allow remote posting, but Owens said coverage was complicated because "state officials were not letting local media into Greensburg. The Pratt staff had no information beyond what we could get from The Associated Press (from which the above photo was obtained) or The Weather Channel."

But at 5:09 p.m. Saturday, news of the Friday night tornado began appearing on the paper's site, with an invitation to post photos and video on Flickr.com and YouTube.com and tag submissions "Greensburg07." At 8 p.m., Owens posted a roundup of that coverage: "You can find a video Jburtonstone with dramatic pictures of debris and destroyed buildings. Sabian2323 posted a video apparently shot Friday night of first-responders checking the damage. Another video compiles several radar images taken from various internet sites and sets the video to an Elvis Presley song. In the blogosphere, coverage has ranged from providing updates for readers to remembrances of Greensburg by former residents."

Sunday evening, the Signal's site gained stories by Editor Mark Anderson about survivors, including the newspaper's circulation manager, and an overall update from AP. Staff writer Gale Rose reported, "The people of Greensburg are scattered to the four winds. Some are in shelters in Haviland or are staying with family and friends. Their homes, their businesses, their town have all been destroyed. Eight of their neighbors are dead and dozens are injured from a monster tornado that relentlessly made its way across the entire city of 1,400 on Friday night and smashed Greensburg to bits." (Read more)

The Web site of the Pratt Tribune, which publishes Monday through Friday, was not updated over the weekend. (UPDATE, May 7: "Our site is much clumsier for posting," Tribune Editor Conrad Easterday told Editor & Publisher.) The towns are about 30 miles apart, in adjoining counties in southern Kansas. "The staffs of both papers are working on a special Monday print edition," the Signal reported in its first story.

May 1, 2007

NPR and David Letterman, on the same day, talk about rural journalism

The latest reports of circulation declines at metropolitan daily newspapers prompted a different take at National Public Radio yesterday. NPR aired a story by Brian Mann of North Country Radio in New York state, about the relative health of small-town papers and the special challenges they face.

Mann cited the recent research by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, calculating that the circulation of newspapers based outside U.S. metropolitan areas is more than 20 million. "One in three small-town papers actually gained circulation last year. And the papers that lost circulation saw much smaller declines than urban dailies," Mann said. "That success has inspired the big media conglomerates to buy in."

His example was Landmark Communications, which is best known for owning The Weather Channel but has been in the newspaper business for a long time, with dailies in Norfolk, Roanoke and Greensboro. Its Landmark Community Newspapers Inc. subsidiary, based in Kentucky, "owns more than 100 small newspapers in 16 states" and hopes to buy up to four more each year, Mann reported, quoting LCNI Editorial Director Benjy Hamm, former editor of a 55,000-circulation daily: "We see community newspapers, in many ways, defying the trends that you see at the larger metros."

For his most specific example, Mann went to his hometown daily, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, circulation 4,100, in Saranac Lake. For the downside, he interviewed another fellow panelist at last month's National Summit on Journalism in Rural America -- Jenay Tate, editor and publisher of The Coalfield Progress in Norton, Va. Tate and her brother sold to American Hometown Publishing 15 months ago. She stayed on, but told Mann that selling a paper her grandfather bought in 1924 "was like losing my heart."

"Many small-town papers face spiraling debt as they struggle to modernize," Mann reported. "As the value of rural papers skyrockets, Tate says more families are tempted to sell out, sometimes triggering nasty ownership disputes. Growth pains aside, small papers face some big challenges. In the past, these rural towns had less access to the Internet, which meant less media competition. That’s changing fast, and more mom-and-pop papers are rolling our their own online editions in a bid to keep pace." Click here to listen to the story. Click here for an annotated transcript.

Even as the NPR was airing the story on “All Things Considered,” David Letterman was taping last night's edition of “The Late Show” for CBS, which included the frequent feature, “Small Town News,” a collection of funny and often strange clips from newspapers in far corners of the country. Then he announced that the most famous feature of the show that evening would be “Top Ten Signs Your Newspaper Is In Trouble.”

Letterman noted the declining circulation of newspapers, without noting that the big declines in circulation are among metropolitan dailies, not smaller dailies and weeklies. But he was setting up a laugh line: “What happens if all newspapers go out of business and we won’t be able to do 'Small Town News'?” For our money, the Top Ten weren't all that funny. We thought the best was No. 3: “Under Weather, it just reads Yes.” For the whole list, courtesy of Jim Romenesko at The Poynter Institute, click here.

April 27, 2007

The ennvironmental reporting category in the Alaska Press Club's annual contest had no winners among large newspapers or broadcasters, but a full complement among smaller papers. "Given the astounding challenges on virtually every aspect of the environment in Alaska – and the exemplary efforts extended to cover them by the state’s small-market papers – this dearth of quality reporting from Alaska’s papers of record is inexcusable," wrote the judge for the category, Douglas Fischer of the Oakland Tribune. "Kudos to Alaska’s smallest papers for aggressively and ambitiously tackling the environment in 2006. Had any of these stories appeared under the masthead of the state’s largest papers, I would have been thrilled."

The first-place winner was “Global warming threatens Northwest Arctic coast,” by Susan B. Andrews and John Creed of The Arctic Sounder of Barrow and Kotzebue, a weekly with a circulation of 2,400. Fischer called it "a stellar example of how an amorphous, difficult-to-report issue like climate change can be made extremely relevant for local readers." In second was “Tanker flow long noted as risky,” by Carey James of the Homer Tribune, which Fischer called "a clear-eyed analysis" of a looming issue. Taking third was “Humpback spends six hours caught in gillnet” by Klas Stolpe of the Petersburg Pilot, a weekly with a circulation of only 1,834. "Stolpe did a marvelous job describing the urgency, confusion and anxiety among fishermen and rescuers alike as they struggled to free a humpback tangled in 75 fathoms of gillnet, lead and cork line," Fischer writes. He also handed out some honorable mentions Ben Stuart of the Homer News, circulation 3,300, and Sarah Hurst of Petroleum News, a trade weekly based in Anchorage.

To read the Press Club's full account of its newspaper awards, click here. In the broadcast category, no environmental awards were given by the judge, National Public Radio producer Jessica Goldstein.

Early in the morning of March 7, Sanger (Calif.) Herald Editor Dick Sheppard "was nearly hit by a car. The editor believes the incident could be retaliation for reporting on city officials' ties with local developers," and the police chief says it appears to have been intentional, says The Fresno Bee.

"Sanger authorities asked the Fresno County Sheriff's Department to look into the . . . incident," saying an outside agency should do the investigation, Tim Eberly reports. "Sheppard, 70, said he believes the incident was not an accident. Since he took the job two years ago, he said, he has been threatened in other ways. He says he has fielded two threatening phone calls, and his office was broken into and ransacked, although nothing was taken. He reported one of the calls and the break-in to police." (Bee photo by Kurt Hegre)

Sheppard said in a March 22 story, headlined "A drive by message to the editor of the Sanger Herald," that the incident "might have been an intentional act of intimidation in response to aggressive reporting in the Herald . . . investigating city officials' involvement and relationships with developers." He told Eberly that some stories have bene publushed and some are still being reported.

Sanger is a town of 19,000 on the border of the urbanized area east of Fresno and the farmland that borders the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in eastern Fresno County. Sheppard, a former broadcast reporter, said he is the only full-time journalist at his newspaper, circulation 17,000, but employs some Fresno State University journalism students. (Read more)

The city council of Lexington, Va., voted 4-2 late Thursday night to invite the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond to move to the Blue Ridge town. "In the end, economic realities triumphed over emotions" like those voiced by Marilyn Alexander (left) and other foes, writes Roberta Anderson on the Web site of The News-Gazette, Lexington's weekly paper, circulation 8,600. (News-Gazette photo by Geoff Dudley)

Anderson's story focuses on history teacher and senior Councilman Jim Gianniny, whose motion "was accompanied by an emotional statement stating he had spent many sleepless nights considering the positions of those both for and against the MOC. . . . Gianniny said he has always tried to educate his students about the failures and injustices committed by the country, the state and Rockbridge County when it came to granting equal rights to African Americans. But the harsh economic realities of the future financial obligations of the city, including millions that must be spent on a new school, new courthouse, upgrades to the sewage treatment plant, additions to the jail and upgrades to the water system, as well as a downtown currently with many empty storefronts, swayed him."

Anderson conveys the tension at the meeting, centering on the Confederate battle flags that are sold at the museum and for many people are a badge of racism and slavery. One man "wondered if the MOC has been honest about its verbalized intention to drop its image as the museum of the Lost Cause and take on a broader historical perspective," Anderson writes of George Pryde, without revealing his race.

“They seem to be telling us one thing and their members another,” Pryde said. “This flag has become the divisive point. It has become the lightning rod. If you bring the museum to Lexington, don’t bring this flag with it.” Anderson reports, "Somehow, that flag ended up on the floor and was retrieved by Michael Pursley, who identified himself as the commander of the local unit of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. 'I am graciously going to pick this sacred flag off the floor,' Pursley said, a comment that caused an African American man sitting in the front row to declare 'I gotta go,' and abruptly left."

The council vote came "despite unified opposition from the black community" in Lexington, reports Rex Bowman of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Opponents " said putting the museum there "would open racial wounds in the city's small black community. About 10 percent of Lexington's 7,000 residents are black," Bowman reports. Lexington was "among a dozen Virginia localities to formally invite the museum to consider moving from its cramped quarters in downtown Richmond," reports Jay Conley of The Roanoke Times. Bowman, however, reports only that more than a dozen, including some outside Virginia, have "expressed an interest." Sunday is the deadline for proposals.

Mike Lester of the Rome News-Tribune in Georgia is the winner of the Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial cartooning in 2006, the Society of Professional Journalists announced at noon today.

Few papers with less than 20,000 circulation have editorial cartoonists, a point noted by the judges. "We felt Mike Lester's editorial cartoons for the Rome News-Tribune showed a unique, breezy and consistent style," they wrote. "Each panel was strong and wry while commenting on important social issues. There is humor but it is not disrespectful. The cartoons have broad appeal. We applaud the Rome News-Tribune, a small newspaper, for having a fulltime editorial cartoonist on staff."

The News-Tribune is part of News Publishing Co., owned by the Mooney family of Rome. It also publishes seven editorially independent weeklies in northwest Georgia and Cherokee County, Ala. It hired Lester as its first cartoonist in 2002, and he tackles local, state, national an international topics.

"Being able to do cartoon commentary on purely local matters adds a dimension otherwise missing from syndicated offerings," the paper's editorial-page editor, Pierre-Rene Noth, said in an e-mail interview. "Promoting and sparking reader participation in the day's topics is very much a function of a newspaper editorial page and cartoons are great way to get something going quickly, at a glance. Besides, word editorials poking fun at life's foibles are far more difficult to do than a sketch … and harder to plow through. Cartoons are a tool born in newspapers and still largely unique to them."

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," Noth says.