As S.D. publisher gives up his title, he tells the story of his family and their weekly paper

Tim Waltner

An outstanding weekly newspaper publisher is giving up the title, but not his connection with the newspaper, which his son and daughter-in-law will take over. Tim Waltner's column about the changes at the Freeman, S.D., Courier is a biography of himself, his family and the newspaper, and an exemplary piece of rural journalism, to be expected from a leader and award winner in the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.

After recounting the twists and turns that took him to Freeman, then away, then back again, Waltner writes, "I could not be happier — for myself, for Jeremy and Stacey, for the Courier and the Freeman community. And I’m pleased I’ll be able to be part of that in these transitional years.

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"I have no illusions about my time at the Courier; I know some people still bristle at my politics, reputation as a rebel and willingness to challenge authority. The role of a community journalist — if you’re doing your job — includes sometimes ruffling some feathers. I’m happy to play that role and am fully aware that some people, as there were 46 years ago, will be happy to see me start to step away.

"But I’ve been humbled and gratified by the support and respect shown me over my 40 years with the Freeman Courier. I’m thrilled to give Jeremy and Stacey the same opportunity Glenn Gering gave me four decades ago. My deepest hope is that community residents and leaders will give them — and the Courier — the support and respect they deserve." (Read more)

Panel at AEJMC convention examines wide range of local, online news start-ups

“Startling Start-Ups in the Business of Journalism,” a COMJIG panel at the AEJMC convention, explored a wide range of new local-news outlets, from Chicagoland to the intermountain West to rural Kentucky, and ended with a project specialist for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation explaining what the foundation looks for as it funds news start-ups.

Rich Gordon, director of digital innovation at Northwestern University, discussed his 2010 Chicagoland study of 206 “micro-publishers,” which he defined as those not affiliated with “legacy media.” (Including the legacy-media sites, he found a total of 449 in the area.) Of the 206, only 36 were focused on particular neighborhoods or towns, which 170 were aimed at a niche audience or interest. Those included 15 run by local organizations, and many sports blogs, which “are huge” in the region, he said.

Gordon discussed several sites, including Gapers Block, which he said is a key link in the region’s “new news ecosystem” because it both links and gets links from many other sites; Evanston Now, which covers that city well and is critical of its spending; Progress Illinois, owned by the Service Employees International Union, which he said is becoming influential in the state’s political discourse; and Brown Line Media (named after a northern commuter train route), which has been the most successful at generating revenue but only breaks even.

Gordon said not all the owners want to make a business out of their site, and most are so small the will never have a dedicated advertising sales person. He referred the audience to a study by Brown Mine Media owner Mike Fourcher of why a regional advertising network for local sites failed: a long sales cycle, relatively small number of impressions and rates that were too high. But with increased networking among the sites, Gordon said, “I am quite confident that more linking will raise all boats.”

Heidi Kulicke of the Orange County Business Journal updated the audience on her September 2011 Editor & Publisher articles about six “Newspaper Trailblazers,” three online and three print.

She followed up on the latter and found that the Great Plains Examiner in Bismarck, N.D., is now selling paid subscriptions after starting as a free monthly; the Flathead Beacon in northwestern Montana, which is still subsidized by owner Maury Povich; and Eric Buskirk, who isn’t making money with the Henderson (Nev.) Press but is with another weekly in Hemet, Calif., which he rescued from closure.

Kulicke’s package of stories also looked at the Bozeman (Mont.) Magpie, the Pulaski County Daily News of Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; and The Faster Times of New York City, all online-only publications.

Al Cross of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky, reported on a study that identified and analyzed local online news sites in Kentucky that were not affiliated with newspapers. He and student Richard Yarmy found 28, 18 of which were active, posting almost daily, with eight of those operated by one owner in what Cross called “a homegrown Patch” SurfKY.com. (Google map)

Yarmy’s analysis of the sites’ content found that about half the stories were from press releases, about half of those governmental; that local-government reporting was spotty; that publishers placed much importance on obituaries, especially in markets without a daily paper; and that the chain's sites tended to have more daily posts than the independent, solo sites, some of which are simple blogs not operated with the intent to make money.

Yarmy’s interviews with the owners found that most were motivated by a desire to provide a public service, and some wanted an alternative to Topix, the nationally operated network that aggregates news about localities and provides bulletin boards for local comments.

The CEO of Topix said Kentucky was the No. 1 state for traffic to the site, and Cross hypothesized that stems from the fact that Kentucky has dozens of small counties that cannot support “a newspaper worthy of the name,” so local residents turn to Topix in an effort to voice their concerns and hold local officials accountable.

Cross and Yarmy said the study should be expanded to define best practices for online community news sites, perhaps including development of a manual for them.

Amy Starlight Lawrence, a project specialist with the Knight Foundation, said Knight likes to fund community news projects that are sustainable and supported by the community, with advertising, subscriptions, single-copy sales or money from local community foundations.

Lawrence said those seeking financial support for local news sites should look to individuals for help, because only one in 10 of the philanthropic dollars in the U.S. come from foundations. She discussed a collaborative project in Macon, Ga., involving The Telegraph, Georgia Public Radio and Mercer University. UPDATE, Sept. 16: Here is a New York Times story about the project.

The PowerPoint presentations from Gordon and Cross, and a PDF of Kulicke’s article, are in a PPTX file (13 MB) that can be downloaded here.

Leaders of tornado-blasted community cite weekly's reappearance as sign of revival

The office of the weekly Licking Valley Courier "was demolished" and Publisher Earl Kinner's home across the street "was leveled" as Kinner took refuge in his basement during a tornado in West Liberty, Ky., a week ago today, Kentucky Press Association Executive Director David Thompson reports. Janet Patton of the Lexington Herald-Leader has a story about the paper's struggle to recover.

This week's edition was a day late, but at a press conference timed to start exactly a week after the storm hit, Morgan County Judge-Executive Tim Conley held up a copy and said it was a sign the community will return. The headline: "Thank God for sparing so many." (Photo by John Flavell)

The weekly newspaper established its first online presence in the wake of the tornado, as reporter Miranda Cantrell started a Facebook page that includes news updates and the paper's story about the disaster. "It was one of the proudest moments of my life when I saw that press rolling our papers," she told us.

KPA's Kentucky Journalism Foundation has created a fund to assist the paper and any others in Eastern Kentucky that suffered damage. "If you wish to make a donation, please make the check payable to Kentucky Journalism Foundation and mail to 101 Consumer Lane, Frankfort, KY 40601," Thompson writes. "I'm pleased to report that contributions are on their way to the foundation from newspapers in other states as well as state press associations. And I’ve been in touch with Xerox Corporation to request the donation of a printer or two." 

Editor-turned-academic falls in love with community journalism after six weeks at small newspaper

St. John, Wash., population 523

Journalism professor and former newspaper editor Mac McKerral got "the surprise of his life" while working last summer at The Community Current, a small newspaper in rural St. John, Wash., he writes in the latest edition of Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.

"It affirmed my belief in the value of community newspapers that focus singularly on their community — the good news and the bad — and that have a bond with the readers served," McKerral writes. "The Community Current is among many of those, but its signatures paint a picture of common characteristics that make it easier to understand why these papers survive and even thrive while the death knell for 'print' rings out."

McKerral's six-week sojourn, funded by his employers at Western Kentucky University, prompted him to write a 4,444-word article  about community journalism that is part love poem, part hard-nosed analysis and altogether interesting for those of us who appreciate and support rural and community journalism. Read it here.

Louisiana editor and weekly win Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity, integrity in rural journalism

Stanley Nelson at The Concordia Sentinel

Stanley Nelson and the weekly newspaper he edits, the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La., are the winners of the 2011 Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues presents the award in honor of Tom and Pat Gish, who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years. Tom Gish, who died in 2008, and his wife Pat were the award's first recipients.

Nelson and the Sentinel showed courage and unusual tenacity in investigating an unsolved murder from the era of conflict over civil rights, and in January 2011 named a living suspect in the 1964 killing of African American businessman Frank Morris. A grand jury was convened and continues to investigate. A prosecutor on the case, David Oppeman, told James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times, “I told Stanley the other day he is the hub in this and everybody else is just a spoke. He did the work that needed to be done.”

The newspaper showed integrity and courage in the face of reader resistance to its dogged, detailed reporting in more than 150 stories. “The owners of the Concordia Sentinel never hesitated in following the story,” Nelson wrote in the fall edition of Nieman Reports, of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. "While most readers read the stories with interest and outrage over what happened so many years ago, many of the most vocal were those who detested the coverage and who questioned our motives," Nelson told the Institute for Rural Journalism. “We knew some would be angered to read about the parish's ugly racial past,” he wrote for Nieman Reports. “Some canceled subscriptions. We were threatened. Our office was burglarized. One irate reader called to find out my ultimate goal. ‘To solve a murder,’ I said. ‘You can't do that,’ she snapped. ‘You're just a reporter!’ She hung up. We pressed on.”

For much more on Nelson, the Sentinel and the Gish Award, click here.

Readers in smaller communities may prefer the paper, but ...

A new study from the Reynolds Institute and the National Newspaper Association is being framed as "readers in areas served by community newspapers continue to prefer the community newspaper as their sources of local news and advertising."

From the release:

The survey, in its sixth year, shows consistent trends.  

Readers prefer the printed copy to the online version, with 48 percent saying they never read the local news online. 

They prefer to receive advertising through the newspaper (51%) instead of on the Internet (11%). And only about a quarter of respondents said they had found local news through a mobile device in the past 30 days. Slightly more (38%) said they had received local shopping information by mobile device.  

They also have a strong preference for government accountability through newspaper public notice, with 80 percent saying the government should be required to publish notices in the newspaper.

Let me suggest a slightly different interpretation. If a quarter of your market said it was using a device to access your product -- in this case mobile -- would that be an "only" to you or a cause for management to start thinking strategically in that area?

If more than a third said they received local shopping information on a platform -- mobile -- and the suggestion was that perhaps not all of them are going to your site, would that be a cause for concern? Or are you willing to write off more than a third of your audience - a segment likely to grow? (Unfortunately, the release talks about a "trend," but provides no trend data or a link to the time series raw data files. You should also read the footnote to the study carefully because the methodology has changed a bit.)

Yes, it's clear community papers continue to have an important place in the media mix of consumers, but I don't think it's all unicorns and rainbows as the release might suggest with this quote:

"The survey shows a majority of respondents believe that the newspaper does a better job of providing background and depth on stories essential to citizens,” Anfinson said. “Further, the newspaper is more useful to them personally than any other news source. It not only highlights the strong bond between local communities and their newspapers, but demonstrates that people do value good journalism." 

If I'm running a business, I'm not willing to give up a quarter or a third of my market, yet I've sat in many a meeting in recent years where community publishers defiantly act as though digital is the enemy or, if they have digital assets, seem largely clueless about them. Bad move.

(Also published on Common Sense Journalism.)

Paper reports a rumor, to protect the object; social media may cause more such cases

Report a rumor? Sometimes it's called for. The Times Tribune of Corbin, Ky., made that decision this week because a rumor made viral by social media was raising the possibility of retribution and discrimination against an innocent person and his business.

Michele Baker's story began tightly: "A Corbin business has suffered a downturn due to an apparently false rumor circulated on social media outlets that the owners refused to serve uniformed soldiers." It quoted the owner, an India native who said he is a U.S. citizen, as denying the rumor and noting that his daughter is in the local high school's Reserve Officer Training Corps; and it quoted the local police chief: “We have had a dozen calls this morning and we are trying to verify the allegations. We are trying to stop the rumors.” (Baker photo: The Pak-N-Sak store)

Having established the official concern, the newspaper weighed in on its own authority, reporting, "Attempts to contact the servicemen who were allegedly refused service have been unsuccessful. Allegations of business owners refusing to serve soldiers are rampant on the Internet." And it kept the story short: 325 words. There's just as long a story in how the 6,000-circulation daily decided to report a rumor that exploded on Facebook and Topix, the website with discussion threads for seemingly every community.

Managing Editor Becky Kilian said she first heard the rumor Saturday, and by the time the office opened Monday, "It was pickling up multiple threads on Topix and was spreading to Barbourville, in the next county." She said that the police chief mentioned it to her in a conversation about another matter and "We were both concerned that if the rumor continued unchecked that it might contirbute to an inappropriate action on someone's part," beyond the ethnic slurs and gullibility displayed online.

Baker went to work on the story, and "In every aspect in Michele's reporting, it looked like a myth," Kilian said. "It might as well have been a Bigfoot sighting." When a Google search found similar cases elsewhere, involving ethnic or racial discrimination, Kilian knew the paper needed to publish an unusual story. "With the discrimination against a minority and the inflammatory langauge that was being used," she said, "it needed to be addressed."

"This is the first time I think in my career as a journalist that I've ever been involved in a story that dealt with a rumor like that," said Kilian, a Corbin native who has been a journalist for 10 years and returned to her hometown as a reporter two years ago. She became managing editor of the Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. paper last year.

"I just wish there was some way to educate people" that just because they read something on the Internet that doesn't mean it's true," Kilian said. "I wish we could teach news discernment." Situations like this call for editorial discernment, too, and the prevalence of social media mean that journalists may have to make calls like this more frequently.

"So far today's story seems to have garnered a great deal of attention," Baker said in an email to The Rural Blog. "I received a call from a man who said he was among those who helped spread the rumor and the he now regrets it." To read Baker's story, click here. To read some of the discussion on Topix, click here.

Alaska Native corporation says it will close its chain of six rural weekly newspapers

UPDATE, Aug. 3: The editor of the Cordova paper is buying it, thus preserving the oldest paper in the chain, but others are scheduled to print their last editions the week of Aug. 15. "The company said it continues to entertain offers for the individual publications," Alaska Dispatch reports.

The Alaska Native corporation that has published a chain of six weekly newspapers for rural Alaska for 19 years is liquidating its newspaper company after failing to find a buyer, leaving most of the rural communities without a local news outlet.

Calista Corp. said Alaska Newspapers Inc. is unprofitable and will stop publishing some time next month. ANI publishes The Cordova Times on Prince William Sound, The Seward Phoenix Log on the Kenai Peninsula, The Dutch Harbor Fisherman in the Aleutian Islands, The Bristol Bay Times in Southwest Alaska, and The Tundra Drums in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta (the corporation's service area), The Arctic Sounder in Northwest Alaska and the North Slope, and First Alaskans magazine. Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News, in a comprehensive story, notes that The Cordova Times is 97 years old.

About three years ago, the company brought its field reporters into its Anchorage office, occasionally sending them out to their coverage areas, then re-stationed reporters in (from west on Google map) Unalaska, Bethel, Seward and Cordova. It started a content-sharing agreement with Alaska Dispatch, an online publication founded in 2008 and funded since 2009 by Alice Rogoff, former chief financial officer of U.S. News & World Report. The Dispatch's Craig Medred writes, "Newspapers in rural Alaska have been struggling like those elsewhere as news increasingly moves to the Internet." He notes the withdrawal of the Daily News to its home area, and lists the other dailies in the state and their owners, none based in Alaska.

"We genuinely hope the communities affected by this will find a new media voice to tell their stories," Calista CEO Andrew Guy said in the corporation's announcement.

The roots of community journalism

Al Cross has a good piece in Nieman Reports this month on the roots, and some of the challenges, of community journalism.

The pull-quote says it all:
‘In community journalism, there is no place to hide, and if you want to hide, then you have no business in this business anyway.’

A lesson in community journalism and blogging

The news director of a public radio station in western Alaska is out of a job after local residents discovered she had a blog that began last fall with a post that read in part, "I love living in a place where I can be treated as a respectable personage simply by dint of being sober, employed and totally uninterested in having sex with relatives or children." Another referred to residents of Dillingham "passing drunk women around like poorly rolled joints."

Eileen Goode "figured she was mainly writing for herself and her friends back in New England," reports Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News. But she should have known that the searchable nature of the Internet would eventually bring the blog Chilly Hell to her neighbors' attention and endanger her job at KDLG, owned by the local school district.

Goode told Hopkins that the station manager told her last Friday afternoon that he wanted her off the job. "Over the weekend, a man pushed her in a ditch, but later apologized, Goode said. A local bar refused to serve her. On Monday morning, she resigned," Hopkins reports. Goode told him, "The first rule of living in a small town is, No. 1, be polite. And I wasn't polite." (Read more)

Seeing need for local ownership, former owner buys back small daily paper he sold 21 years ago

Gene Hall of Charles City, Iowa, sold the Charles City Press 21 years ago. About a month ago, he and his wife Cathy bought it back, along with the New Hampton Tribune and associated publications. This week, in the Iowa Newspaper Association Bulletin, he explains why, and it's a terrific testimony to the value of local newspaper ownership. There are good chain-owned papers, but Hall has seen the bad side of both forms of ownership, and with the newspaper business in turmoil, his reflections are quite timely.

"I am coming more to the realization that in order for community papers to be the best they can be they must be locally operated and better yet, locally owned," Hall writes. "I repurchased the paper I sold some 21 years ago because this is my paper in my community and I care. I’m essentially a private owner of a public trust and I feel good about that." With a circulation of 2,800, the Press is one of the smallest daily newspapers in the country. (Encarta map)

Hall opines, "The business model of community/local newspapers is still strong and will remain so. What is broken is the capital structure caused by way too much debt; unrealistic profit goals set by private equity owners; operational plans put in place by “Wall Street” analysts whose lack of knowledge and experience in the business is only exceeded by their shortsightedness."

Hall notes that he was "a corporate officer in a publicly traded media company for more than 15 years." His piece doesn't name the companies, but he told us that they were, in succession, Hollinger, Liberty Group and GateHouse Media. "Never was there a meaningful discussion about the product being germane to the community. Never a sentence about putting something back into the product or community," he recalls. "What has and is ruining American media is that, like even baseball, it came to be run solely as a business. Newspapers are more than a business. They have obligations and responsibilities far beyond what a big-box retail store or a widget manufacturer has. ... Big business has corrupted a sacred covenant. Care must be taken with a commodity so central to democracy." (Read more, via RuralJournalism.org; this item is also posted to The Rural Blog)

NRJ to feature special issue on "The Future of Community Journalism"

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: SPECIAL ISSUE OF NEWSPAPER RESEARCH JOURNAL FOCUSED ON "THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY JOURNALISM"

The rapid changes in the newspaper industry have turned more focus in recent years to what appears to be one of the more stable branches of the newspaper business — small-circulation daily and weekly newspapers generally referred to as "community newspapers." In light of these developments, the Newspaper Research Journal is accepting research articles and conceptual/theoretical essays that will shed light on "The Future of Community Newspapers" for a special issue of NRJ (tentatively scheduled for the winter 2011 issue).

This call is for articles that provide insights into the modern role of community newspapers, as well as suggestions that would help community newspapers to adapt to the changing marketplace. Both social-scientific and cultural/critical approaches will be considered, as will mixed-methods approaches. Preference will be given to articles that draw upon and advance media theory, although insightful non-theoretical, descriptive studies will be considered.

Submissions will undergo NRJ's usual peer-review process, and must be original research that is not under review with any other publication (although modified conference papers will be considered). NRJ's published guidelines regarding length, citation style, and formatting of tabular material will apply. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 1, 2009.

Submissions should be sent as Microsoft Word files to guest editor Bill Reader of Ohio University. E-mail them to reader@ohio.edu.

Another metro veteran finds success in CJ

Earlier this year, I talked to a reporter for a New Jersey political Web site about where veteran metro journalists are going after they are laid off or take buyouts from big-city newspapers. Some go to work for politicians or large organizations to do PR, I noted, but one option a few are embracing is moving to small and/or rural communities to take over or start community media.

Poynter's Sara Quinn recently wrote about just such a person, Jim Denk, who was a news design specialist for a number of large newspapers (Wichita Eagle, Asbury Park Press, Detroit Free Press, and the Charlotte Observer) before he and his wife, Janet, bought the 11,000 circulation weekly Record in Matthews, N.C. Jim and Janet run the newspaper with a handful of part-time employees, and told Quinn that they enjoy the "doing it all" aspects of publishing a community weekly.

Quinn is a design specialist at Poynter, so naturally her profile of the Denks focused mostly on how they use high-end visual journalism to serve the community and to showcase the kind of news and information that is so common to community journalism – intensely local concerns. Denk has used visuals to tell compelling stories about poorly design sidewalks, wildlife that live in and around the community, even the passing of a pet rooster that was a fixture in a local hardware store. And, of course, the ads – Denk puts just as much effort into custom-designed ads for the businesses of his community.

Read the profile, and see some samples of excellent community-journalism design work, at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=151124

Convergence Newsletter - special communities issue

The Convergence Newsletter is seeking contributions for its June issue on the impact of convergence and distributed journalism in communities.

We are looking for articles not only on geographic communities, but also on social and economic ones. How has the online world fostered community? Or split it apart? Or realigned it? We hear a lot about the issues of big-city dailies, but how is this playing out in smaller communities, or in communities never envisioned before?

What "convergence" are we looking for, how do we define it? We don't. We think Rich Gordon did a great job many years ago and will consider submissions in any of these areas. Likewise, this is not solely about news and journalism (as we classically define it). Technological convergence, for instance, may be forming its own social communities with their own means of information sharing. And, shifting back to the geographical for a moment, how is all this interacting with the warp and weave of community structures and life?

The June issue is part of our new realignment into topical issues. We hope to have a communities and convergence issue twice a year.

The Convergence Newsletter has about 1,000 subscribers (and growing - if you don't get it, please feel free to subscribe for free or visit our blog), is published out of the University of South Carolina and Newsplex once a month except for June and January. We call it a journal of first impression. Most pieces run from 600-1,200 words. It is not peer reviewed, but it is edited. It's an excellent place to work on the kernel of a thought that may blossom into a longer publication or to write about notable things that may not become a longer project but are just as valuable to know about. (For instance, I saw a paper for a class the other day that had a unique set of interviews with Lawrence Journal-World staffers about the problems with comments on the site and how to deal with those.)

If you have a proposal, please e-mail me (dfisher@sc.edu). You'll probably hear back from Brad Petit, the day-to-day editor, who will work out details with you.

Thanks,
Doug Fisher
Executive Editor

A community newspaper slapped for reaching out?

The Mount Airy News in north-central North Carolina last week published a series of stories about some North Carolina missionaries who were stranded while on a mission to Cameroon. Some readers questioned the coverage, as many of the missionaries were apparently from outside of the traditional news boundaries of The News.

The editors on Sunday published an explanation for why they crossed their own community boundaries, and said their choice was essentially to offer a helping hand to a needy stranger:

"When a desperate loved one says she is frustrated with diplomatic efforts to get her spouse out of country boiling over in civil unrest," the editorial states, "and needs the local media to cast a spotlight on a neglected continent and put some pressure on the bureaucrats, there's no time to quibble about boundaries. The first response from any responsible journalist should be to find a way to cover the story and to enlist as many media outlets as possible to aid in the effort."

The editorial obviously was based on feedback the newspaper received regarding its reporting. One critic challenged the newspaper's devotion of a "really thin" reporting staff to a story that had more to do with Washington, D.C., bureaucracy than local news in the Mount Airy region. (Another critic took potshots at the grammatical errors in the editorial -- boy, do we journalists love THOSE kinds of critics).

The message for journalism educators is multi-faceted. First, it suggests that community news media can have an influence on government at the state and national levels. It also suggest that community news media can set a national news agenda by being the first to pick up and run with a story that is being ignored by "the big guys." It also serves as an example that people served by community news media are not always oblivious to the limitations faced by community journalists nor to the differences between community journalism and regional/national journalism.

An exemplar of rural and community journalism changes, offering essential lessons in the craft

Examples of community journalism are easier to come by than a clear-cut definition of the term. For years, the Point Reyes Light in western Marin County, California, has been an exemplar. The weekly newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1979, for its coverage of the Synanon drug-rehabilitation group that turned into a religion, but well before that had established itself as an essential part of community life and function. That is less true today, and the change teaches lessons.

You may have read about the ownership and policy changes at the Light in “The Language of Strangers,” by Jonathan Rowe in the latest issue of Columbia Journalism Review. He makes good points about community journalism that are rarely seen in the pages of national journalism reviews. My graduate assistant, Tim Wiseman, and I did a little extra reporting on it, which you can read at www.RuralJournalism.org.

Hannibal editor reflects on meetings with Ohio U. students

Last week, the J-school at Ohio University brought in as a guest Mary Lou Montgomery, editor of the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post. In July 2006, the Courier-Post launched an intiative to reduce its use of wire copy and replace it with content contributed by the community, and to increase total local content so that two out of three headlines are local (some weeks, the ratio gets up to four out of five headlines are local). Montgomery credits the initiative, called "Putting the Community back in the Newspaper," for the newspaper's first circulation gain in five years, as well as dramatic increases in Web-page views, community support for the newspaper, and newsroom morale.

One of the best parts of Mary Lou's visit was the many interactions she had with students. On her blog, Montgomery listed some of the questions she fielded, along with her responses.

Circulation gains at, you guessed it, community dailies

Editor & Publisher's report on the most recent FAS-FAX numbers presented the usual glum picture for the "newspaper biz" (i.e., the biggest papers in the nation), but to its credit, E&P this year also listed the top gainers in circulation. Only three of the papers listed in the "gainers" sidebar have circulations above 50,000; most are in the 5,000-30,000 circulation range and are in rural and small areas.

Again, we need to be careful not to narrowly define "community journalism" as just small-circulation newspapers, but that is a large part of our discipline, and so these numbers are encouraging.

North Dakota journalism students come to aid of rural newspaper and town devastated by tornado

While Jock Lauterer's students at North Carolina are helping a newspaper stay afloat while its editor-publisher recovers from major surgery, those in a community journalism class at the University of North Dakota have come to the aid of a rural newspaper and town devastated by a tornado. I asked their instructor, Dr. Jacqui Lowman, one of the newest academic partners of our Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, to share the experience, which is now posted as a feature on our www.RuralJournalism.org home page and excerpted as an item in The Rural Blog.

By Dr. Jacquelyn Lowman, University of North Dakota

On the night of August 26, 2007, a killer tornado ripped through the little town of Northwood, N.D. There was great damage and the town was reeling.

Help poured in, but amid the confusion, folks there needed something to cling to, an affirmation of existence, a promise that they would prevail. In short, they needed The Gleaner, the weekly paper. But all the newspaper staff members were personally affected by the tornado and the paper’s advertising base was severely diminished. The Gleaner was in trouble. Newspapers stepped up, taking out ads to keep the income flowing. The publisher of a neighboring weekly and his staff pitched in to help get out the first post-tornado issue.

Northwood is about 40 miles from the University of North Dakota (and about 10 miles from where I live), and my students have adopted The Gleaner. That first week, I went with three of them to get people’s stories of survival and triumph. Since then, my students, by ones and twos, are going to Northwood, getting stories, contributing articles of hope to The Gleaner, making a record for posterity. The students will be continuing this at least through the semester.

This is tough on them. They are seeing and experiencing emotional pain and suffering. There are times when they need some hand-holding and the stories have to be pulled out of them. But they are growing enormously and giving a priceless gift. I am so proud of them and of the wonderful profession of community journalism.

I asked Jacqui to send me some student stories and images for posting on our Web site. Wes Fahrenbruck write about a woman who found refuge from the storm in a bathtub: "We all spend some time in the bathtub, but rarely without a roof over our heads. Mary Weber, an employee at the Northwood Deaconess Health Center and six-year resident of Northwood, has spent time in the tub looking up at the sky." (Read more)

Nick Johnson wrote a more personal account, about helping his girlfriend's grandmother: "She thought of every excuse in the book to stay in her home, telling her daughter Anne, “I just washed these sheets today, and I’m going to sleep right here in my bed.” As her hand came down onto the mattress to reiterate her point, a number of leaves bounced off her freshly washed sheets. At that moment, Grandma Haga started to realize what had actually taken place." (Read more)

Mark Thueson, a former meteorology major, wrote a story describing the path of the storm. "It reads like a thriller to me, despite the fact that I know what happens," his professor wrote. He also put together some images to help people follow along," one of which appears below, with Northwood at the center and the tornado path in red. For his story, click here.

Five more years!

Community Journalism Interest Group successfully "passed" its assessment by the AEJMC folks and you can now consider us part of the "permanent" landscape at AEJ. Here's what they said we should spend some time on:

• Define clearly what "community journalism" is. We may know it, but that doesn't mean everyone else in journalism and mass comm education does. We need a slogan, a label, so we can ....
• Get the word out about community journalism. In other words, market our IG. If community journalism is the hot trend, well, what are we doing to capitalize on that? And how are we letting the world know?
• Spend less time worrying about the number of research papers, and figure out what research we want to focus on. Perhaps it's in teaching, perhaps it's in public service (working with communities and news professionals). Focus our call for papers on a topic or 2.
• Make sure we document our activities beyond the convention .... national meetings we're part of, booklets we put together, etc.
• Understand that a lot of our diverse membership can come from our work with professionals (outside AEJ membership lists).
• Keep building the blog. Folks loved it.