University help for community journalism among topics at weekly editors' conference in Kentucky June 20-23

By Al Cross
Director and professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Editorial critique session at an ISWNE conference

The annual conference of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, July 20-23 at the University of Kentucky, will have programs on university help for community newspapers, national politics becoming local, dealing with the evils of social media, new business models for weeklies, governments’ role in the news business, a visit from a news-media leader from Mongolia, newspapers’ and libraries’ common interests, and the hallmark of the conference: editors' critiques of other members' editorials and editorial pages.

Those sessions are on the schedule for Friday and Saturday, July 22 and 23. As usual, the professional-development programming will be preceded by two days of tours in the area; the itinerary includes a historic newspaper, an iconic horse farm, a bourbon distillery, and a community that is headquarters to a big cannabis company and for 14 years was home to a newspaper created by UK students and their professor (this writer). For a detailed schedule, click here.

Attendees will stay in a university dormitory, and private rooms are available. The conference fee is $600 per person, and there's a three-day, $300 option. ISWNE membership is $50 a year. The registration form is here. The deadline is Wednesday, June 15. Questions? Email al.cross@uky.edu.

Friday’s opening session will examine the common interests of newspapers and public libraries. “Libraries and newspapers share the front lines in the battle for intellectual freedom,” says AnnaMarie Cornett, chief of staff at the Lexington Public Library, who will join with other leaders of the library to talk about their approaches to neutrality and challenged materials, and how libraries and newspapers can work together in the fight against censorship.

Next up will be a session on navigating the increasingly contentious political landscape. My informal survey of ISWNE members last year found that editors are becoming more cautious because the national divisiveness has made local public discourse more contentious, and I have heard likewise from other editors. I’ll present what I have heard, then lead a group discussion so we can learn more and help guide paths forward.

Allison Frisch of Ithaca College and Gina Gayle of Emerson College will discuss their research paper about the ways higher-education journalism programs can help community newspapers. They found that such partnerships can increase civic engagement, create new local media channels, and strengthen civic literacy, engagement, and democracy. They also can give students real-world experience covering a wide range of issues, and help newspapers in need of more resources.

After lunch and ISWNE's annual Associated Press Stylebook quiz, we will have a discussion with Bradley Martin, editor and publisher of the Hickman County Times in Centerville, Tenn., about dealing with the evils of social media, and when it’s necessary to dip into the cesspool. Brad has an object example of a social media mess that had a serious impact on a school, a student and his family. I’ll be you have some examples to discuss, too.

Should government help the news media, and if so, how? Canada has taken steps to help newspapers that would be off-limits in the U.S., where the newspaper industry is fighting battles in Congress and state legislatures. Gordon Cameron, group managing editor of Hamilton Community News in Ontario, will give a report from Canada, where government help hasn’t set well with some rural editors. I will discuss battles in the states over public-notice advertising, and efforts in Congress to help news media recover some of the revenue they have lost to digital platforms – efforts that are better suited to community papers than they were at the start, but U.S. editors and publishers are still debating what role government should play in sustaining local journalism. I’ll also discuss newspapers’ biggest victory in Congress lately, the great expansion of the ability to send sample copies to non-subscribers in their home counties.

What are the ethics of seeking public-notice ads and other support for local journalism from public officials whom you may have to cover and comment on? That will be the point of departure for a roundtable session about tough ethical calls, often a challenge in rural communities.

To wrap up Friday's discussions, we will have a session looking at new business models for community newspapers, drawing in part on our recent National Summit on Journalism in Rural America, where speakers talked about taking their newspapers into nonprofit status, working with a local community foundation to put philanthropy into their business model, and using e-newsletters and membership models to raise more revenue from readers. (For another Summit story, on the state of rural journalism, click here.)

On Saturday, after the editorial critiques, we plan to hear from a very special visitor: Enkhbat Tsend, chairman of the Press Institute of Mongolia and CEO of Control Media LLC. Mongolia ranks 90th on the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, but that is higher than most nations near it. The index says Mongolia “broadly respects the principles of freedom and media pluralism, though its regulation still lacks basic legal protection for the confidentiality of sources and imperfect defamation laws encourage abusive lawsuits against journalists, stirring self-censorship.”

So, the conference will reach from your campus to your county courthouse and city hall to state legislatures and Congress and to other nations, just as an ISWNE conference should do. Please join us.

Monday is deadline for nominations for major journalism ethics award; nominate a community journalist!

By Al Cross

Director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Monday is the deadline to nominate journalists for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics, presented by The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the six years the award has been presented, none of the winners have been rural journalists. None may have been nominated, but I think there should be no shortage of qualified candidates because rural journalists frequently deal with ethical challenges. I teach my community journalism students that it is more difficult do do good journalism in rural areas, partly because of the constant conflict that rural journalists must deal with, between their professional responsibilities and their personal desires.

The Anthony Shadid Award recognizes ethical decisions in reporting stories in any journalistic medium, including print, broadcast and digital, by those working for established news organizations or publishing individually. It focuses on current journalism and does not include books, documentaries and other long-term projects. Entries must involve reporting for stories published or broadcast in 2017. Individuals or news organizations may nominate themselves or others.

Letters of nomination must include: Name and contact information of the nominators and their relationship to the story; names of the reporter or reporting team that produced the report; brief description of the story and a link to it online; description of conflicting values encountered in reporting the story; options considered to resolve the conflicts; and final decisions and rationales behind them. Nomination letters of three pages or less should be saved in pdf format and attached to an email sent to ethicsaward@journalism.wisc.edu. For more information, visit the website.

The award includes a $1,000 prize and travel expenses to accept the award and discuss the reporting at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on April 5. It differs from most other journalism awards because it honors difficult decisions journalists make in pursuing high-impact stories while fulfilling their ethical obligations to their audience, their sources, and people caught up in news events. “The stories nominated are always phenomenal, but the committee makes the decision on the finalists and winners by considering how reporters and editors negotiated ethical dilemmas while reporting,” said Lucas Graves, chair of the judging committee.

The award is named for Anthony Shadid, a UW-Madison graduate who died in 2012 on a reporting assignment in Syria for The New York Times after winning two Pulitzer Prizes for foreign correspondence. He was a member of the ethics center’s advisory board and strongly supported its efforts to promote public interest journalism and to stimulate discussion about journalism ethics.

Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M. wins Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism

By Casey Parker-Bell

University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications

Two community journalism giants received awards for their service Thursday night and showed their gratitude while focusing on how journalists can improve their craft.

Robert Trapp Jr., publisher of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M., accepted the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog.

The award was given to the Trapp family, recognizing the work of his parents, Robert and Ruth Trapp, who started the Sun in 1956 with a partner they later bought out. The weekly paper and the elder Trapp have received many awards, and Institute Director Al Cross said the Gish Award for them was overdue.

The award is named for the couple who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years and won national recognition for their courage, integrity and tenacity as they practiced a straightforward style of journalism in the face of opposition from powerful interests.

The Eagle and the Sun have exchanged papers for many years, and members of the Gish family joined Trapp at his table at the Marriott Griffin Gate Resort in Lexington, Ky.

An emotional Trapp was clearly thankful for the award. He explained that his parents had put reporting the truth over advertising dollars, and he pointedly described what he believes will improve journalism at all levels: quality reporting on issues that are important to the community. “That’s what we should be doing,” he said. “Following the stories that affect our communities and trying to improve our communities by doing that.”

In his speech, Trapp called community newspapers “the last bastion of truth in reporting.” Here's a video of the award presentation and his acceptance speech:

Carl West accepts the Al Smith Award

Carl West, former editor of The State Journal in Frankfort, Ky., and founder of the Kentucky Book Fair Committee, accepted the Al Smith Award for public service through community journalism by a Kentuckian. The Institute and the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists co-sponsor the award.

West also emphasized the importance of newspapers in his speech. “Newspapers, journalism, it’s a community trust. A public trust,” he said. He highlighted how important accuracy and fairness are to journalists, how downsizing is changing newsrooms (including the one where he remains editor emeritus) and how the people running newspapers should view their service to the public.

“Newspapers aren’t a bank. You have to make money to own one and run it. Sure, but you’re not going to get rich,” he said. “If you are going at it that way, you’re in the wrong business.”

West also spoke about the Kentucky Book Fair and how it has helped fund public libraries in small communities with limited financial resources and has touched thousands of book lovers.

The Al Smith Award is named for the co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, who owned weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee and was the founding host of KET’s “Comment on Kentucky.” He also spoke at the dinner.

Nominations for next year's awards will be accepted until April 1, 2016.

Should city pay postage to distribute community weekly?

The Madison, Wis., suburb of Fitchburg has entered a deal with a community-newspaper publisher to cover at least $30,000 in postage to revive the print edition of the town's paper, which stopped printing the paper in 2009. An article in the Wisconsin State Journal broaches the conflict-of-interest topic (would the deal curb editorial independence, despite assurances from both the publisher and the mayor that it would not?). It also briefly touches on the "value of community newspapers," though it does not expand on that point.

Here's the link: "A community newspaper returns -- with help from city hall."