Eric Newhouse provides some great insight into community journalism

Recently, current and former AP staffers were asked to weigh in on Connecting, the internal newsletter published by retiree Paul Stevens, on all the various issues surrounding the Charlie Hebdo story, issues of publishing material that might offend someone or a group, etc.

Eric Newhouse, a former AP bureau chief, provided these thoughts that turn out not so much to be about Charlie Hebdo as about community journalism and the reality of being a community journalist.

With Eric's and Paul's permission, I am sharing them here:

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Eric Newhouse (Email) - Re Charlie H., just because you have a right doesn't mean you have to exercise it all the time, particularly if you know it will offend or hurt others.

I learned that lesson in my post-AP life as projects editor of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune. We had committed ourselves to do a 12-part series of stories exploring alcohol abuse in Montana, at least one major package of stories each month for the calendar year 1999. By late February or early March, I was working on a package about how one alcoholic makes the whole family sick, which was to run in April, and the group leader of a local Al-Anon group invited me to sit in on a session.

So I showed up, notebook in hand, and was introduced by name. To make the point clearer, I added that I was a reporter working on a series of stories about alcoholism. No one voiced an objection, so I openly took notes as the meeting progressed.

But after the meeting, a group of women approached to tell me that an Al-Anon tradition requires that what is said in the room stays in the room. They asked me to leave my notebook on the table.

Knowing that by identifying myself as a working reporter without protest, I had a perfect right to report what was said in an open meeting. So I challenged them, asking why and asking how they intended to compensate me for the time that would have been wasted if I left the notebook behind. 

"Give us a moment to talk," their ringleader said.

When they returned, they explained that the tradition was designed to let group members talk honestly without repercussions, and they said they'd be willing to sit around a picnic table with me and tell their stories again in a way that would be more politically correct. "We've all been the victims of alcohol, and we don't want to victimize others," one of the women told me.

That did it for me. I left the notebook on the table, joined them on a park bench outside, and found the new stories were just as compelling as the previous one, although they omitted certain names and details.

The stories ran without incident, but when I began working on the June package, which was how alcohol fuels domestic violence, the wife brought up the Al-Anon encounter and asked how I had resolved it. I told her that I'd left the notebook on the table and that I'd interviewed the women outside the Al-Anon meeting room.

"Just checking," she told me. "Because if you'd screwed our friends over, no one in the alcohol community here would have been willing to speak with you."

My skin crawled when I heard that because I knew that would have been the kiss of death for our 12-part series. Instead the alcohol community supported me, offered tremendous help and encouragement, and celebrated with us when the series won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for explanatory reporting.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in reading that series, I expanded it into a book, Alcohol: Cradle to Grave." Drop a check for $18 into an envelope, send it to me at 141 Rosetta Lane, Charleston WV 25311, and I'll ship you a copy of the book.

St. Louis American takes a strong stand on Ferguson

When The Washington Post wanted local perspective on the publication of leaked reports from the autopsy of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., they turned to community newspaper editor Chris King.

King is managing editor of The St. Louis American, the largest weekly newspaper in Missouri and one of the best African-American newspapers in the U.S. Over the last two weeks, he has been an outspoken critic of the Post and The New York Times, both of which published the autopsy leaks in late October. The leaks seem to suggest that Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Brown in August, will not face criminal charges. The protests and riots touched off by Brown’s shooting have received international media attention.

King told the Los Angeles Times a law enforcement source had offered him the autopsy reports, but he decided not to run them. In the Post article, King was quoted as saying he suspected the publication of the leaks could touch off more violence on the streets of Ferguson, an idea that was echoed in an American editorial the same week. That editorial read, in part:

The Times and Post ran with this anonymous third-party hearsay regarding a high-stakes case that has our entire region on edge. Tensions are so high that preparations for riots, if Wilson walks free, are discussed in sober terms in local and national media and on street corners. The editors of these powerful publications have shown a lapse in judgment and ethics that is not only shameful, but actually dangerous.

This week the American covered  protesters upset with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s publication of the leaked autopsy details.

Aggressive reporting and public commentary on matters such as the leaked autopsy reports are nothing new for the American. The newspaper has provided pointed, comprehensive coverage of the social unrest in Ferguson, Mo., since Brown’s shooting.

Texas community journalism center hopes justice stories spur local papers

This release came in recently from the Texas Center for Community Journalism. Might give ideas for those in other states as well:
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The Texas Center for Community Journalism has made two new investigative series available free of charge to Texas newspapers and their websites.

             Both series are written by Kathy Cruz, reporter for the Hood County News in Granbury and consultant in investigative reporting for TCCJ.  Both series are underwritten by the Hood County News and the Center.

            One series, Justice for All, investigates the fairness of the Texas criminal justice system, especially in cases that deal with indigent defense.  Stories in that series examine the quality of legal services in Texas and the impact of the justice system on those who are accused of crimes, as well as the impact on their families.  The other series, Routier Revisited:  Was Darlie Unjustly Convicted?, looks at one of the state’s most celebrated murder convictions, which sent a Rockwall mother of three to death row following a conviction for killing two of her children.  The case spawned TV documentaries and books, and now has many observers questioning the police investigation and the trial.

            Both series have been uploaded, along with art and logos, for use by community journalists in Texas.  The Justice for All series is available at http://digital.community-journalism.net/projects/justiceforall
.  The Darlie Routier series is available at http://digital.community-journalism.net/projects/routier.

            Tommy Thomason, director of the Center, said he hopes Texas newspapers will go beyond just printing the Justice for All series especially.

            “We want newspapers to look this series over and get ideas for their own investigations,” he said.  “We hope papers will run their own stories on the quality of the justice system in their coverage area and send them to us.  We will upload those stories alongside the ones Kathy Cruz has written.”

            Jerry Tidwell, publisher of the Hood County News, said the projects are important for Texas community journalism.

“Community newspapers typically do not have the staff and the resources to take in-depth looks at statewide issues,” Tidwell said. “This is a way to help them and, in the process, provide a service to the people of Texas.”

Harrisburg paper broke Penn State story in March; reporter calls it 'huge testament to local news'

Uncovering the story of a former Penn State football coach's alleged rapes of boys "was all local journalism," Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim told Howard Kurtz this morning on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

"Its a huge testament to local news," Ganim, a 24-year-old Penn State journalism graduate told Kurtz, who initially referred to the 71,000-circulation Advance Publications newspaper as "The News-Patriot." Ganim said, "It was all local journalism, going to my sources. ... I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and getting shooed off properties."

Ganim said the newspaper "did have some pushback" to her stories that first reported the investigation, starting March 31, but "I actually expected a lot more than we got. . . . For the most part people were happy that we were bringing this out." The stories didn't get much play beyond Pennsylvania until ex-coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted this month, perhaps because they were based on interviews with people who had testified before a grand jury, reporting that was difficult for non-local media to match, Ganim said.

The story of Sara Ganim "is also the story of a family-owned media company, Advance, of a second-generation newspaper editor, David Newhouse, of a publisher, John Kirkpatrick, who understands what a newspaper means to a community, and of a newsroom that has the deep local connections and also the courage to keep going no matter what the potential cost to its own reputation," Carl Lavin writes on his 07newsroom blog.

For Ganim's original story, click here. For her latest summary, focusing on authority figures and "What did they know and when did they know it?" go here. Her last-Sunday story about why the probe took so long is here.

Community Journalism: Courage and tenacity

American Journalism Review has an extensive piece on how the Times-Tribune in Corbin, Ky., won the Gish award given by Al Cross and the Instituted for Rural Journalism and Community Issues this past Friday:

Samantha Swindler, then the managing editor of the daily Times-Tribune in Corbin, Kentucky, had been spearheading an investigation of the local sheriff when a Kentucky state trooper came to her office and told her, "You really need to be careful." ...

Another day, her reporter on the story, Adam Sulfridge, received phone calls from three different law enforcement officers telling him to leave his house because of a credible death threat.

Both Swindler and Sulfridge bought pistols "because, quite frankly, I thought my reporting might get me killed," Swindler wrote in an article for Nieman Reports. She never had to use hers, but Sulfridge -- who lived and reported in the county seat, Williamsburg, in closer proximity to the sheriff -- had his pistol close at hand when two men drove to his house on a dead-end street. In her article, Swindler describes the driver as a "man we suspected as part of a group of drug dealers associated with the sheriff."

"That was the only time I actually had to pull my gun," Sulfridge recalls. The men drove away, and a week later the driver was arrested on federal drug charges.

But Swindler and Sulfridge didn't back down. They kept asking tough questions, the paper kept running stories, and in November the Whitley County sheriff, Lawrence Hodge, was indicted and arrested on 21 counts of evidence tampering and abuse of public trust.

Small daily takes frank look at troubled local bank

For most of the time since the banking crisis hit, more than a year ago, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues has encouraged community newspapers to report on the health of their community banks, using easily available public information gathered by federal regulators and public-interest organizations. We have no idea how good the coverage has been nationwide, but we think it would be hard to beat what we've seen this week in The State Journal of Frankfort, Ky.

First the newspaper reported that the leading bank in town, Farmers Bank & Capital Trust Co., plans to start repaying the $30 million it borrowed from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and that its non-performing loans increased from $29 million to $44 million over a six-month period earlier this year, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reporter Paul Glasser also cited a recent report by the bank to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., revealing that it lost money in September, after making $4.3 million in September 2008.

Those are the kind of figures that could make depsitors worry about the solvency of their bank. The newspaper confronted those fears and figures in an editorial, saying, "This doesn’t mean the local bank, or its holding company, is on the brink of failure. Most failed institutions are said to have troubled asset ratios of 100 percent." But the editorial also noted that the bank plans to sell stock to repay TARP "at the risk of diluting current shareholders," that the Investigative Reporting Workshop of the American University School of Journalism to report that the bank's troubled assets rose to by more than a fifth this year, and its "troubled asset ratio" was 36.9 percent in September, far above the national average of 14.1 percent." And it went back to the start of TARP, noting that the “Treasury Department insisted the loans were not bailouts of participating banks, merely a helping hand to get sound institutions through tough times. But ProPublica, a nonprofit group of investigative journalists, said some of the banks 'have turned out to be not so healthy.'”

The editorial continued relating the local situation to the national, saying the bank "is in the same predicament as its customers: Even though some economists say the recession is over, the recovery is too weak to make anyone feel especially secure. [It] finds neither businesses nor individuals are in the mood to borrow much money, which inevitably depresses the bank’s revenue outlook," the editorial continues. "If Americans really have resolved to reduce their indebtedness, that’s not a bad thing. Farmers Bank was established in an era of fewer consumer goods when people found it prudent to borrow only if they really needed to, and vigilant bankers kept them from diving in over their heads. It’s past time for financiers, and the rest of us, to rediscover the proven wisdom of living within our means." (Read more)

That's a frank and helpful look (accompanied by a cartoon) at a town's most powerful financial institution, by a newspaper that has a circulation of only 8,000 and is often considered the "local little sister" to metropolitan papers in Louisville and nearby Lexington. While Frankfort is the state capital, it is not metropolitan; it has a population of only 27,000 and a county population of fewer than 50,000, so The State Journal is still very much a community newspaper. It's owned by Ohio-based Dix Communications.

Community Journalism of a different kind in Elkhart

I had not heard about this MSNBC site focusing on Elkhart, Ind., until a story today in the New York Times.

But I think it's worth taking some time to look at as an interesting prototype of a community journalism in-depth site. MSNBC has partnered with the Elkhart Truth, which still does most of the daily stuff while MSNBC does the depth work. It's a model that might have some application elsewhere. Not that everyone's going to be able to partner with MSNBC. But your local university or foundation might be a good substitute.

(As a former Fort Wayne newsman, I know Elkhart pretty well. It was ripe, I think, for something like this, just as Hartsville, S.C., appears to have been ripe for our HartsvilleToday project. Making these sites successful is about having a special community mix. It is worth exploring further in research.)

A 'swarm' approach to in-depth reporting

One of the most persistent myths of Community Journalism is that it is often "soft" journalism that does not tackle tough issues. We plan to confront that myth in August at the AEJMC convention with a number of sessions, most notably a panel on bravery at rural newspapers.

In the meantime, you all should read the American Journalism Review article about CNHI's attempt to combat that myth as well — by getting many of its 90-some newspapers to collaborate on in-depth reporting on big, national issues. Examples include a three-part series on gambling addiction, another series on the crumbling Interstate Highway system, and a brilliant (and scary) series on the injuries suffered by young athletes who play for poorly trained coaches.

One of the most important things we can all do as members of COMJIG is bring such examples to the attention of our colleagues and students to remind them that Community Journalism can (and does) include many examples of serious, in-depth reporting.