Volume 53, No. 3-4 • Fall/Winter 2012 Grassroots Editor • Fall-Winter 2012 Toto, I Don’T Think We’Re
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Toto, I don’t think we’re (just) in Kansas anymore How U.S. community newspapers are serving as a model for China By Jock Lauterer . Pages 1-7 Community crisis and community newspapers: A case study of The Licking Valley Courier By Elizabeth K. Hansen and Gary L. Hansen . Pages 8-12 Before bloggers there were ploggers (print loggers): Community journalism correspondents By Beth H. Garfrerick . Page 13-18 Mr. and Mrs. John Doe announce the engagement of…: A study of the decline in reader-submitted content in four Eastern Kentucky community newspapers By Deborah T. Givens . Pages 19-24 Using social media to report the news: The good, the bad and the ugly By Maria Raicheva-Stover and Robert Burkett . Page 25-26 Press freedom: Keep an eye on Iceland By Jennifer Karchmer . Page 27 Reporting health: Rural newspaper coverage of health in Kentucky By Al Cross and Sarah Vos . Pages 28-32 volume 53, no. 3-4 • fall/winter 2012 grassroots editor • fall-winter 2012 Toto, I don’t think we’re Editor: Dr. Chad Stebbins Graphic Designer: Liz Ford Grassroots Editor (just) in Kansas anymore (USPS 227-040, ISSN 0017-3541) is published quarterly for $25 per year by the International Society of Weekly How U.S. community newspapers are serving as a model for China Newspaper Editors, Institute of By Jock Lauterer International Studies, Missouri Southern State University, 3950 East Newman Road, Joplin, MO 64801-1595. Periodicals post- Introduction age paid at Joplin, Mo., and at June 2012 additional mailing offices. Slathered with SPF 30, I am sitting in a beach chair, gazing out east into the calm Atlantic where the rollers POSTMASTER: Send address changes gently spill onto Long Beach, Oak Island, N.C. to Grassroots Editor, Institute of During this quintessentially American family beach week (19 adults, 11 children in two houses from International Studies, Missouri Southern California to New York) my sunburned body rests here seaside in N.C., while my mind, memory and thoughts State University, 3950 E. Newman Road, race east — or is it west? — 7,000 miles to the other side of the world. Joplin, MO 64801-1595. It wasn’t until I began editing the thousands of photographs that I began to get the big picture on this summer’s Volume 53, Issue 3-4, Fall-Winter 2012 Fulbright to China. Subscription Rate: $25 per year in From my 1998 fellowship at National Geographic I remember the sight of Nat Geo photographer Lou the United States and Canada; $28 per year Mazzatenta working in an editing room surrounded by thousands of slides spread out on light tables around him. elsewhere. His job that day: to cull/edit all his shot down to just 60 images, the “golden tray” as they called it, what with the old slide tray’s holding five dozen. Officers of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors So as I got down to my golden tray, the narrative began to unfold like captions beneath still images, frozen moments from the Middle Kingdom in a state of dramatic societal flux. President: Cheryl Wormley The Woodstock Independent So let us begin with the Foreword, written for Professor Chen’s book, which will set up the narrative. Next, Woodstock, Ill. we’ll hear from Prof. Chen herself describing the book’s significance. Following, we’ll meet Prof. Li Ren and learn about the magic of live-Skypeing between our classes. Then we’ll slip into the “China Journal” I kept dur- Vice President: Kelly Clemmer ing my Fulbright to China, and wrap it up with the dramatic developments that have occurred as a result of the Star News Inc. initiative. Wainwright, Albert Executive Director: Dr. Chad Stebbins, Director, Institute of Note: The following Foreword is addressed directly to Chinese journalism students as well as to media profes- International Studies, Missouri Southern sionals. State University, 3950 E. Newman Road, Joplin, MO 64801-1595 Phone: (417) 625-9736 Foreword Fax: (417) 659-4445 When I inform my students that 97 percent of all U.S. newspapers are small* newspapers, they are invariably E-mail: [email protected] surprised. Some are openly skeptical. Like most Americans, they subscribe to the stereotype that the American newspaper landscape is dominated by only the big-city daily newspapers with spacious offices on the top floor Board of Directors: of some urban skyscraper. And perhaps the Chinese reader will also hold to this simplistic notion. But as you Steve Bonspiel will read, in the United States, nothing could be further from the truth. Small newspapers, which we call “com- The Eastern Door munity newspapers,” are the heartbeat of the country. They are located in practically every village, hamlet, small Kahnawake, Quebec town — and even in some cases, urban neighborhoods. Whether they are weeklies in the state of Maine, twice- Dave Gordon weeklies in North Carolina, or even dailies in California, they all share a common, often unspoken purpose — Professor Emeritus, beyond being merely profitable: to TELL the LOCAL news, to SERVE the community and to help BUILD that University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire community by instilling, nurturing, reinforcing and encouraging a “sense of place.” We call this “community- Paul MacNeill building,” and the local media is the primary engine driving that train. The Eastern Graphic Montague, Prince Edward Island Gary Sosniecki Our beginnings: country weeklies TownNews.com, Moline, Ill. As you doubtless realize, the U.S. is a very young nation. Certainly compared to a Chinese culture that Andy Schotz stretches back 5,000 years. A mere 200-plus years old, our country is a baby! But out of that “newness” grew a The Herald-Mail new form of media. Remember that the European settlers of the 1600s found this land to be a vast wilderness. Hagerstown, Md. And as exploration and development moved from the coasts into the interior, small farming and market towns Barry Wilson sprang up. These “start-ups” were not unlike new businesses: someone had to be the leader, or leaders. And very Asset Media Services often among the vital institutions and facilities that town leaders deemed absolutely necessary would be a home- Kiama, NSW, Australia Immediate Past President: * According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, newspapers with print circulations below Kris O’Leary 50,000 are defined by the industry as “small newspapers.” The Star News Medford, Wis. 1 grassroots editor • fall-winter 2012 town local newspaper! about the most basic of American cultural and journalistic tenets, “What is the Cody, Wyoming, is the perfect model. When legendary cowboy “Buffalo Bill” meaning of this?” she would ask — forcing me to think critically and to articulate Cody built the town in the 1800s, he proclaimed that the first establishments built clearly the very foundations of my culture and profession. in his new town would be a school, a hotel, a bar and a newspaper! To this day, Many times, as we struggled to communicate effectively, we would both realize Buffalo Bill’s newspaper, the Cody Enterprise, thrives. the chasm of cultural differences that lay between us. But always, humor provided These so-called “country weeklies,” many of which were started in the 1800s, the bridge — and we learned to laugh about the American professor speaking developed, grew, were bought and sold, merged and evolved quietly, out of view “Chicken,” while the Chinese professor was speaking “Duck.” We were both of the big city major metro press and mainstream journalism academics — until “birds of a feather,” using the same words, but those words weren’t having the the late 1950s when a seminal book was written that changed the landscape. same meaning. Community Journalism, written in 1960 by Ken Byerly, a former country weekly It was as if our communication challenges served as a metaphor for the larger editor/publisher turned university professor, changed the way we thought about issue — that of our two home nations, the U.S. and China — attempting to make so-called “country newspapers.” Byerly was the first author/scholar to delete sense to, and of, each other. Sometimes succeeding and often failing, but always “country” and substitute the word “community” to brand and to differentiate the trying. style of journalism — distancing community journalism as a concept, style and Through all our discussions and debates (some quite heated!) I came to realize practice that was wholly separate and apart from “big-city journalism.” Byerly was and appreciate the fact that American community journalism could not simply be also among the first to grasp and articulate the “sense of community” as being vital overlaid or beamed down or “cut and pasted” onto China…but that China would to the newspaper’s raison d’etre — vital to its core mission. From the ‘60s through have to examine and dissect our “best practices” and then adapt, adopt, modify, the ‘90s and until 2001, American community newspapers multiplied, grew, mold and shape a version of community journalism that will be wholly and thor- thrived and flourished. Only the events of 2001 and the subsequent recession have oughly Chinese. Again: the Chinese Way. slowed that growth. But even in the economic downturn, community papers weath- ered the economic storm far better than their big-city media cousins. North Carolina as an American laboratory So now, as a new age dawns, community journalism is once again resurgent. Ironically, the slow demise of the major metro daily has led to a new respect and As a result of my book, I was able to organize in 2005 a national cadre of 200- desire for all things local. So we have this expression, “What is old, is new again.” plus like-minded university professors from across the U.S.