Storm Lake will get your attention
Washington County leads state in Covid 19 infections
The Front Page
Morning Update
Sunday, November 14, 2021
By Ken Tingley
Filmmaker Joyce Levison is like many other people who never gave their local newspaper much thought.
“They don’t think about their local news sources and they think it will just always be there,” Levison told the Houston Press last week.
That was before she started her documentary with co-director Jerry Risius about a small, rural newspaper in Iowa. The Storm Lake Times is like many small newspapers that dot the landscape of rural America. They don’t cover presidents, they cover village mayors and county supervisors. The reporters are often young and inexperienced, the editors dedicated and committed to making their community better and standing up for the right thing. They are the connective tissue that holds the community together.
The Storm Lake Times is independently owned, published twice a week and struggling financially. The documentary is called, “Storm Lake: Inside the family run newspaper keeping journalism alive.”
If there is one documentary to watch this year, I urge you to watch this one. It will air Monday evening at 10 p.m. on local PBS channels.
From its description, Storm Lake has the same philosophy and goals of holding its community leaders accountable and responsible as many other newspapers, including The Post-Star.
It’s a close-up look at community journalism, the people who do it and how it is done. Next spring I have a book coming out called “The Last American Newspaper” that I hope accomplishes the same thing.
The filmmakers say they started out to make a film about a newspaper, but it ended up being a film about a community. That makes sense because newspapers are so intertwined in their communities.
“In the end, we really hope that people who see the film don’t just see it as a film about the Cullen family and the Storm Lake Times and Storm Lake, Iowa,” Levison said. “We really hope viewers see themselves in their own community in the film and that it encourages them or it inspires them to rethink their own relationship to local news. Are they subscribing to their local newspaper? Are they business owners placing ads in the local newspaper? Are they supporting the pillar of American democracy in their own community.”
It is so nice to hear someone who is not a newspaper editor acknowledge the key role that local newspapers play in their communities, and conclude that responsibility has too long been taken for granted.”
“Newspapers many times tell stories about the local community, but they don’t tell their own stories,” Risius added. “Many people have no idea their media literacy is so low that they have no idea what’s happening financially.”
The directors said that initial viewings of the film have had viewers responding to the journalists and asking about their own newspapers.
“You know we’re really happy that this is happening (reader attention) and that we hope that people bring this conversation into their communities and continue to do so,” Risius said.
I hope they do, too.
There is a crisis of information coming locally and most people are not aware of the ramifications.
I’d like to see this film shown at the Wood Theater for free to all citizens. I’d like to see the Warren County Board of Supervisors show it at a meeting. I’d like SUNY Adirondack to craft a community journalism conference around the issue.
Earlier this week, I saw Storm Lake Times Editor Art Cullen being interviewed on MSNBC. I first heard about Cullen back in 2017 when he was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for standing up to corporate farm interests.
The Pulitzer board praised Cullen for “editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.”
Within the newspaper business, small newspapers often don’t get their due when it comes to the quality and impact of their journalism and I’m especially elated when one of the little guys wins a Pulitzer.
After Cullen won the Pulitzer in 2017, I emailed him and told him it was another win for small-town community newspapers everywhere. We were all part of a community journalism fraternity, not really trying to win Pulitzers, but trying to make sure our local communities were on the right path.
A few weeks later, I remember blogging about how state politicians in Iowa tried to block a simple proclamation honoring Cullen for winning the Pulitzer. Cullen thanked me for the support and called the political maneuvering “petty.”
The pandemic has been especially hard on his newspaper and you have to worry about the future for all newspapers.
“The business model has been dying for several decades,” director Risius said. “And they are trying to figure out how to pivot to that next step in some way which is digital. But when we went out there: I think one year they made $2,000 and that was for the whole year.”
“It’s kind of like we happened to make a film about this species that could be going extinct,” Levison said. “But all of a sudden the conservationists are mobilizing and really trying to figure out what we can do to save the species.”
If you care about democracy, giving up a little viewing time might be a good first step on Monday.
“You can change the world through journalism,” Cullen says in the documentary. “That's the only good reason to get into this trade, because when you're looking for a friend, remember that the dog can't read.”
To mask or not to mask
I suspect most people don’t know exactly how bad the Covid 19 infection rate is locally.
Most people don’t read a newspaper and even fewer check the up-to-date infection rate. Washington County currently has the highest infection rate in the state of New York and Warren County is in the top five. There are 43 people hospitalized for Covid 19 and seven are in the intensive care unit. The infection rate here is 10 times worse than San Antonio, Texas where my son now lives. Yet, when I visited the supermarket on Saturday, less than half the people had masks.
It seems like such a simple community-oriented thing to do.
I will be watching! Thanks Ken
I plan to watch this extremely important program tonight. Also your suggestions were excellent re showing the film at the Wood theater, etc.