Blue Highways Journal

by Jock Lauterer
Director, Carolina Community Media Project

Over the last nine summers, I’ve led community journalism workshops at over 130 Tar Heel newspapers. This summer, I’ve decided to focus on the independent (or semi-independent) community papers, particularly the so-called “non-dailies,” which are clearly weathering The Great Recession far better than their big-city daily cousins. Last month I went to one of the state’s most “dug-in” pair of weeklies, the Clemmons Courier and the Davie County Enterprise Record of Mocksville where the average tenure of the staffers was in the double digits (including 85-year-old Sara Campbell, who’s been there 63 years!) This week, by contrast, I wanted to find out about a daring start-up over in Garner, just southeast of Raleigh. What I found there should restore your faith in the future of journalism.

WHAT KIND OF A FOOL…?

Garner Citizen staffers proudly hold up fresh copies of their paper, hot off the presses. The paper's owners are Barry Moore, second from left, and Debbie Moore Rodwell, far right. ( Photo by Jock Lauterer)

Newsprint, the office cat, had left her gray catnip mouse on the newsroom floor of the Garner Citizen, bearing silent witness to the old saying: You can tell it’s a community newspaper if there are kids and animals in the newsroom.

But the Garner Citizen (News & Times) isn’t just another 2k paid circulation weekly, of which there are literally thousands across the country. The bold newcomer to the Wake County newspaper wars, an almost 2-year-old indie, gives the lie to a snarky blog post I read recently: “What sort of FOOL starts a newspaper in 2007?!”

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By Jock Lauterer

May 2009

Part of the staff that puts out the Davie County Enterprise Record and Clemmons Courier assembles for a team photo. And they ARE a team. (Photos by Jock Lauterer)

Permit me to disabuse you of the notion that all newspapers are failing.

Sure, we all know that many major metro dailies were already in a dismal state prior to the economy tanking last fall, due largely to investor greed and corporate owners taking on too much debt. Since then, their sad demise has been all too well documented.

So take a deep breath and allow me this summer to take you beyond from the beltways, off the interstates and out onto our state’s “blue highways” where we boast at least 190 smaller newspapers, including about 140 weeklies — many of which are still independently owned, or at least owned by small groups which could hardly be called a “chain” in the sense of a company the size of a McClatchy or a Gannett.

I’m interested in this size newspaper, not only because I used to help run a pair of weekly papers and the fact that I teach “community journalism,” but also because of what I’ve observed firsthand over nine summers of workshops statewide from Murphy to Manteo.

In spite of the economy, I’ve witnessed in weeklies (and especially in the non-chain weeklies) a strength of community spirit and a vitality of robust sustainability that will restore your faith in journalism.

So wouldn’t it be instructive to ask: what are these folks doing right? How are these community papers weathering what some are calling “The Great Recession?” Is there a formula, or at least a common denominator among these successful small-town news institutions?

I decided to start with a pair of western Piedmont papers I’ve long admired, the Clemmons Courier and the Davie County Enterprise Record of Mocksville, both owned by the Evening Post Co. of Charleston, S.C., and printed at their sister paper in Salisbury. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jock Lauterer

In the recurrent dream I’ve had for years, I enter a small-town newspaper office that is strange and yet vaguely familiar. As I search for my desk, Ron Paris materializes before me, greeting me with his characteristically merry war-whoop, directing me to my place.

When my old partner of 30 years ago died in late August after a two-year battle with cancer, his family, former employees, friends and colleagues hailed the deceptively built Ron as “the little giant,” “the last true community journalist” and a “champion of the community” and “a pioneer.”

Ron was all that and more. I was privileged to serve as his junior partner and co-editor/publisher along with Business Manager Bill Blair during the best days of my working press life, the nine years from 1969-1978 when our start-up, THIS WEEK in Forest City, grew into arguably the best weekly in the state — a creation that was largely the result of Ron’s vision, hard work and unswerving dedication to excellence in community journalism. (The “little paper that could” went daily in 1978, but in my opinion the Daily Courier never measured up to the weekly. Our conversion to daily prompted me to sell to my partners and start the weekly McDowell Express in Marion in 1980.) Read the rest of this entry »

Oxford Public Ledger Editor Al Carson, AKA, the Hot Dog Man, prides himself on being able to help deliver the family-owned, twice-weekly community paper in Granville County. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

My intended target, the unsinkable Al Carson, editor of the Oxford Public Ledger, needs no schooling in journalism — or life lived large, for that matter.

So I turned off the Powerpoint and started listening.

In March 2007 at only 57, Al suffered a stroke that would have killed a lesser soul. Although still paralyzed on his right side, Al is back in the editor’s chair, aided by a loving wife, a supportive work environment at the Ledger, a loyal community, a red scooter and two faithful side-kicks on the news side at the paper.

But it is Al’s relentless sense of humor that struck me from the get-go. (First of all, picture a latter-day lumberjack with a graying beard, mustache and mischievous flashlight blue eyes.)

“People say how courageous it was for me to come back to work,�? Al harrumphs with his trademark sly grin. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with me.�? Like the storyteller that he is, Al lets the line just hang there for second longer…

Then, “My wife, Betsy, said, `You’re not staying here in this house! Now get out of that bed!’�? He laughs, and then adds seriously, “She been really instrumental in my life.�? Read the rest of this entry »

During this summer while the Carrboro Commons staff members have either graduated or completed J-459 (Community Journalism), this space follows the statewide ramblings of Carrboro Commons adviser Jock Lauterer, who, for the last eight summers, has led community journalism workshops at small papers “from Murphy to Manteo.” So far this summer he has visited with the folks at the Shelby Star, the Gaston Gazette, the News of Orange County, the Lake Norman Times, the State Port Pilot in Southport. Herewith is his latest blog from the mountain community of Waynesville where the Smoky Mountain News, a feisty upstart weekly, has made a name for itself with hard-hitting investigative reporting.

So the two-newspaper town is a thing of the past, right?

Wrong.

Not only do all eight N.C. major metro papers have cross-town print competition of some form, but more surprising is what I’ve found out there in the Tar Heel state’s smaller towns on those “blue highways.�?

Owner/Editor Scott McLeod and his crew pose outside the downtown offices of the Smoky Mountain News in Waynesville. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

(For a N.C. dual-newspaper town list, see the end of this story.)

This observation, gleaned over eight years of summer Roadshows on the backroads of North Carolina gives heart to this old newspaper hound. While the major metro newspaper industry may be in the “Big Chill,�? our community papers appear robust.

All this came into focus today when I visited with owner/editor Scott McLeod of the Smoky Mountain News, a free 16k weekly located right around the corner in Waynesville from another excellent indy tri-weekly, the Waynesville Mountaineer.

So how do they do it? The 9-year-old Smoky Mountain News (SMN) has carved its own niche with the aim of being “the regional newspaper west of Buncombe,�? Scott explains. And their claim to fame? Investigative reporting!

You read that right.

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Gene Roberts, left, accepts the North Carolinian of the Year award from NCPA President Tim Dearman of Statesville Friday in Asheville. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

Arguably the most decorated living Tar Heel journalist, the 75-year-old Roberts started small before becoming a national figure.

But even when he reached the top, he never turned into what my mama used to call “Mr. Big Britches,” — never forgetting or denigrating his humble Eastern North Carolina journalism origins; and that’s one of the many reasons why I honor him so.

To my great delight, I’m not the only one. The North Carolina Press Association named Roberts its 2008 “North Carolinian of the Year” at their annual summer convention in Asheville on Friday, July 18.
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June 24, 2008

State Port Pilot staffers assemble for a group portrait in their skylighted entrance atrium: clockwise, from front and lower step, Colin Campbell, writing intern from UNC-CH; Lisa Stites, staff writer; Jonathan Spiers, staff writer; Lee Hinnant, news editor; Ben Brown, staff writer; Suzi Drake, features editor; Ed Harper, editor and Hilary Snow, staff writer. Not pictured, Bret McCormick, sports editor, Jim Harper, photographer and Terry Pope, associate editor. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

Maybe you’ve been reading about the buyouts, layoffs and shrinking news hole at McClatchy-owned papers and could use a dose of optimism.

To do that, you might want to take to the “blue highways,�? where all-local community papers, including small dailies but especially independently owned weeklies, are holding their own, and then some.

For starters, I wish I could pack the whole glum bunch of professional media funeral mourners into my car and take them to the State Port Pilot of Southport.

The gold standard.

That’s what I call The State Port Pilot. This profitable, innovative, growing, family-owned broadsheet weekly consistently wins annual state press awards for news and advertising by the boatloads.

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