by Jock Lauterer
Director, Carolina Community Media Project

Giving the photographer (who has cleverly inserted himself into the picture) Robeson Journal staffers, left to right, are Editor R.J. Walker, Office Manager Sandy Lowrey, Publisher Danny Cross, Intern Arlene Austin, Account Executive Jennifer Grant and Graphic Designer Steven Gonzalez. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

But then, there’s the Robeson Journal of Lumberton, an indy weekly with a newsroom of that very nearly mirrors Robeson County’s historic diversity, equally divided roughly by thirds between black, white and American Indian (Lumbee) residents — plus a small but significant Latino population.

Six staffers attended my workshop, including the Journal’s publisher and account executive, who are white; the office manager, who is Lumbee; the editor, who is black and married to a Lumbee; the graphic designer, who is black, Cherokee and Latino, and the intern from UNC-Pembroke, who is black.

Owner and publisher Danny Cross, a Robeson County native, says the diversity of his staff was a happy accident. “I just went out and got the best people I could find,” he explains.

Whatever — it’s no wonder that the Journal is doing as well as it is in tough times and a crowded media market. The Heartland-owned daily Robesonian across town in Lumberton offers stiff competition. But the Journal folks are not intimidated, claiming they cover more diverse subject matter, and do it better and with more of a personal nature. And not surprisingly, they say they’re more in touch with the community — or communties.

A newspaper start-up is a risky and terrifying venture, but in spite of the times, Danny launched the Journal in 2003 along with partner James Locklear (who he later bought out) billing it, “Robeson County’s Weekly Newspaper, Independently and Locally Owned, Your Source for Community News.”

Going against the free model trend, they went paid from the get-go. “We wanted to start paid, because then if you have to, you can always go free. But you can’t start free and then go paid,” Danny reasons.

So far it’s working, with the broadsheet 14-16 page weekly boasting a paid circulation of 4,000. And when I asked Account Exec Jennifer Grant how the ad sales were going, she said, “OK.” Now, that may not seem very impressive at first glance, but there are plenty of metro daily newspaper account execs out there who would DIE to be able to make that statement.

So how has the Journal managed to compete successfully with the cross-town 12.5k circ daily that also claims to be a community paper?

Danny says the Journal is more local and more in-depth. He points to a special tab publication devoted to the Lumbee homecoming as an example.

“We do stories they won’t,” says Editor-in-Chief R. J. Walker, who himself is a force to be reckoned with — a big personable man clearly in love with his job and his county. Everywhere he goes, R.J. carries his Canon and fills the Journal with his photographic finds.

When it comes to the essence of community journalism, R.J. gets it. Every week the back page of the Journal is devoted to a regular photo feature called “R.J.’s Photo Gallery,” colorfully displaying upwards to 20 unassociated photos of people who didn’t make it into the paper anywhere else.

Explaining the origins of the feature, he says, “Wherever I am, at news events or whatever, I’m always taking other pictures, off to the side. So many people complained when these photos weren’t getting in the paper — I asked myself why don’t we DO something with these photos?”

It’s street photography, grab-shots of people waving back, grinning at the camera or caught in a candid moment. Not the stuff of Pulitzers, to be sure, but surely the stuff of that most sacred of home altars, the refrigerator. Grouped together, these guileless snapshots make for an irresistible package; a local hometown scrapbook-of-the-week.

And though it might not be obvious at first, R.J. puts a lot of effort into keeping the Gallery as diverse as the community. “I am very conscientious about the balance,” he says.

Readers love it. And now wherever R.J. goes, he’s sort of like Santa with a camera — people know what’s coming, and it might be their chance for their photo in the paper — doing nothing more than waving at the photographer!

“You never know if you’re gonna’ end up in the Photo Gallery!” R.J. says with a big grin.

But there have been times when folks would rather R.J. not take their picture. Like the time when R.J. surprised some local cops about to chow down on a box of doughnuts…R.J. says when he raised the camera, one of the cops said, half in jest, “I will KILL you if you take that picture!”

All joking aside, R.J. and his staff have nurtured their relationships with local news sources, including law enforcement. When something is going down, the police tip off R.J. on his cell phone.

“You said it!” is another eye-catching feature. A variation of the old “man-in-the-street” interview, this visual grabber spreads eight excellent mug shots in a skybox across the top of the paper above the nameplate. Each week, eight Robesonians are asked a question like, “Despite the economy, where will you be traveling this summer?” But the front teases you inside to page 13 to find the answers.

Look, I don’t even live there, but I was compelled to turn to page 13 to see for myself. And you know what? Everybody interviewed had some travel plans for the summer! That ought to make to Tim Geitner’s day.

Over on page nine I stumble on another weekly nugget, Fairmont community (seven miles to the south, population 2,604) mayor Charles Kemp’s wonderfully un-edited local calendar. Here is an excerpt. Yes, it’s written in all-caps.

“SUN JUNE 21 - FINALLY IT’S DEAR OLD DADS DAY. TRY AND LOOK OUT FOR THE OLD BOY OK? AND FINALY TAKING CENTER STAGE ITZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE THIRD ANNUAL FAIRMONT’S FANTASTIC 4TH….WELL MY FRIEND, THAT THE BEST I CAN SUMMON UP FOR JUNE. I KNOW YOU HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING THERE TO INTEREST YOU. COME JOIN US AND LET’S GET SUMMER STARTED RIGHT IN FAIRMONT.”

And here’s another human interest feature: folks send in (or R.J. shoots) church marquees around the county. The photo runs in a one-third page ad space paid for by local small businesses. Here’s one I saw: “Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the Present.”

UPS AND DOWNS

There is a flip side of the Journal’s willingness to cover so much. “We can’t be everywhere,” R.J. says, and this is especially apparent in the area of providing comprehensive sports coverage to area high school athletics. The Journal does not have a sports page, per se, nor do they have an editorial page. Journal leaders say both of these elements of the paper are areas in which they want to grow.

Naturally, they’d like to add more pages, and Danny says there is pressure from readers and advertisers to bump the Journal up to a twice-weekly.

But when it’s said and done, the Journal is what it is: a unique indy weekly that has clearly found a niche. The infectious voice of R.J. Walker sets the tone, and you can’t help but get pumped about community journalism when you hear him explain why he loves his job so much. It’s the variety and the stimulation; he comes to work and he never knows what’s going to happen. That keeps him hopping.

“Every day is different, he says. “Every day is like a new book. Maybe that’s why journalists live so long.”

I think I may have stumbled on the way to save newspapers.

Joyce McRae and James McDougald launched the Maxton Times last September and operate it out of James’ bustling neighborhood laundromat, the Express Laundry, in downtown Maxton. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

No, seriously. Think about it. People HAVE to wash their clothes, and while they’re spinning and drying, why not chat with the editor/publisher or buy an ad?

If you think I’m joking, come with me to Maxton, a little railroad town on U.S. 74 just east of Laurinburg and west of Lumberton — plunked down in the country too far from either daily newspaper town to merit much coverage. And this rankled Maxton natives James McDougald and Joyce McRae.

“We sit in the crack between these two towns and don’t get a lot of representation,” James explains. “We need a voice!” chimes in Joyce.

So they joined forces to start The Maxton Times, with their first monthly edition coming out last September.

“The Maxton Times is the newest monthly newspaper covering Maxton and the surrounding communities of Alma, Evans Crossing, Flora College, Gaddys Mill, Midway, Raemon, Red Hill and Prospect. Years ago, these communities received their (local) information from their high schools…” James and Joyce wrote in their inaugural edition. ”Now that the high schools are no long in Maxton…there has been a disconnect within the communities. A community and its people are harmed when the source of its information exchange and who it identifies with is taken away…By working together we will get our news out there, stay connected with our neighbors and build our communities.”

Did I mention that the paper is produced in James’ Laundromat? It’s named “Express Laundry!” for the CSX freight train that rumbles through Maxton several times a day just across the street.

“We just love doing this newspaper,” Joyce exclaims. “It’s just Maxton, but we’re having a ball.”

The fact business partners and lifelong friends James and Joyce are running a newspaper out of the Laundromat doesn’t faze customers. In fact, it is a friendly neighborhood gathering place, a social setting, what sociologists call “a third place,” and James knows this.

James politely hauls in laundry for a customer — a task not on most newspaper publisher’s job description. (Photo by Jock Lauterer)

The Maxton Times’ “newsroom” is like none other I’ve ever encountered.

Returning to the counter, James resumes. “It’s sort of like a (neighborhood) bar with regular customers.” Laundry customer/readers keep the paper full of birthday notices, photos of family and friends and congratulatory ads. Actually, now that I think about it, the paper sort of resembles and serves the same function as a laundromat bulletin board — always useful, informative, sometimes funny but never boring.

MAXTON EX-PATS

James and Joyce grew up together and attended the local elementary and old Maxton high school before going on to college, he to Wake Forest and she to UNC-G. Then they both had careers elsewhere — James playing college and a little pro football before selling for Fuji for 17 years — and Joyce in D.C. in banking for 20 years. But Maxton was never far from their thoughts or hearts.

“I physically moved, but I never left home. This is home,” says Joyce.

They’d been talking about coming “home” and starting a paper for about seven years before actually getting up the nerve to take the leap.

“When you come back to your hometown, you want to make a difference, “James says, “to help bring the community together…there are a lot of 50-somethings coming back here.”

Although the pages of The Maxton Times are filled with lots of dark faces, James is adamant that The Maxton Times is not an African-American newspaper, “Absolutely not, we didn’t want to typecast it as a “black” newspaper,” he says, explaining that Robeson County is “split one-third, one-third, one-third: black, white, Indian.” And then he adds, “I grew up on a farm. We ALL played together. We were too poor to be prejudiced.”

MAXTON PRIDE

James and Joyce are Maxton boosters and make no apologies about that, although they’ve butted heads with city hall occasionally when they’ve told it like they saw it. “We do have lots of problems, but it’s home. I can talk about my family but you can’t!” James says with a grin.

This month, for instance, they took on Robeson County Board of Education member Jerry Young who stonewalled the long-delayed building of a new gym for the local middle school. Of the decrepit gym’s bathrooms, Joyce wrinkled her nose and says,” They are so bad, I don’t even know the word …horrible!”

One suspects that if The Maxton Times had not covered the outrage of the Maxton parents, that aspect of the story might have gone untold.

Of the police blotter that they print, James says, “If you don’t have the morals to do right, we’ll shame you into doing right.”

“OUR HOME — INVEST IN IT”

The Times’ slogan printed beside their nameplate reflects their agenda.

They would like to see Maxton grow, and promote new businesses like the new ice cream parlor that opened around the corner this summer. “She’s our own,” Joyce says of the store’s owner, “You got to promote your own!”

James describes his typical reader as ranging “from the unemployed to farmers, sheet rock hangers, mill workers, hospital employees and small business owners. They all feel they have something to offer, and we want them to do so.”

James and Joyce think the Maxton Times can be a catalyst for community-building. In a follow-up e-mail, James wrote, “We are living in a non-trusting world today. We want to start with Maxton and show the citizens they can trust their Maxton Times to give them the news of their small businesses, their kids at school, what their government officials are doing and bring a little hope about tomorrow, if they need some. Our Maxton High School (closed due to consolidation) gave the people to Maxton something to be proud of and we hope The Maxton Times newspaper can bring some of that back.”

One way they do that is with special event sections, such as the Mothers Day and Fathers Day spreads in which readers could print parents’ photos and a brief tribute for $5 each. It began modestly with the moms, and then by the June edition, they had two full pages and 96 dads honored in the Times.

PAYS FOR THE PRINTING

The ads that the 5k circulation free broadsheet monthly brings in pays for the printing, which is done in High Point. So far, neither James nor Joyce have taken any salary, “But we knew that from the beginning,” Joyce explains. They’d like to grow the paper to a twice-monthly (bi-weekly) but are content for now to just let the Times get traction — which is clearly growing. When the paper comes back from the printer, folks line up at the laudromat to get a fresh edition of the Times.

James hopes that the public support for the Times is real, and he likes the public radio business model so much that they plan to kick off a pledge drive in August.

ONWARD AND UPWARD

As a youth James said he scoffed at community news, “Who cares about this?” he used to think when reading local news. But with maturity his attitude changed. “Now that I’m 52,” he vows, “I understand it.”

Talking to these two, you get the feeling they’re on to something more than just clean clothes. “This is our own little Mayberry,” Joyce says with a twinkle in her eye. “We kind of glow when we talk about it.”

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?!”

Answer: Adventurous entrepreneurs, who love journalism and their communities and who, in these times of newspaper churn, see and seize the opportunity.
In Garner’s case, that would be the sister-brother team of Debbie Moore Rodwell and Barry E. Moore, whose Vol. 1, No. 1, hit the streets of this “great little all-American blue collar town” (Debbie’s words) on July 24, 2007, out of a sense that Garner needed a “great hyper-local newspaper.”

From the get-go, Debbie and Barry have had a no-holds-barred attitude, thinking of themselves as pioneers taking part in a newspaper revolution and “redefining the newspaper world,” says Debbie, the energetic 40-something publisher with a career in marketing and sales. “We ‘re open to try anything. We think outside the box. Put on your seat belts!”

It’s difficult not to get pumped about community journalism when you’re around someone with so much positive energy. “This is the most rewarding job I’ve ever had,” she vows.

“Brother,” as Debbie addresses Barry, strikes me as a good business match. A retired police officer, Barry serves as executive editor, and grounds the paper with his solid business sense. When I asked him why they decided to charge (75 cents per copy and $39 a year) for their start-up, and why they didn’t go with the free model, Barry responded without a pause, “It never occurred to me to give anything away.”

BIG NAME; LITTLE PAPER

The Citizen has a curious handle for a start-up with “News & Times” in smaller type tacked onto the bottom of the larger The Garner Citizen on their flag and business cards — a tribute I’m told, to the historic Garner News and a defunct paper named the Garner Times. Making this more confusing, there IS a Heartland Publications LLC-owned paper across town named The Garner News, and the competition includes the relatively new McClatchy bureau paper, the Garner-Clayton Record. If that sounds like a lot to go up against, Barry is confident: “I really don’t consider them competition,” the latter of which he says is spread too thinly over too much territory to be effective.

Both Debbie and Barry are locals, and they think that is central to how well they’ve done. “We are at all the functions,” Barry explains. “ We partner with everybody. We serve on commissions. We are local-local- local.” Debbie chimes in, “Our relationship to this community is organic. We’re home-grown.”

THE YOUNG AND THE ENERGETIC

If business acumen and energy describe Debbie and Barry, the word to describe their newsroom is: Youth. It’s a young and enthusiastic crew throwing themselves into this start-up, led by 28-year-old City Editor Paul Tambasco, a former 8th grade teacher who started at the Citizen in September after coming over from the Garner News. The other staffers I met were: 31-year-old Rachel Healy, the Web designer and editorial and production manager who’s been there about a year; Creative Director Courtney Flaherty, 23, who’s been there a year; Amy Townsend, 23, editorial assistant, who started in October; and Graphic Designer Jay Gross, a senior at Campbell, who just joined the staff.

Here’s another another dynamic: not one of the young newsroom staffers is actually from Garner. So, bottom line, the staff of The Garner Citizen is still just getting to know one another. And they are still getting to know Garner.

But novelty is one of the engines of a start-up, and Debbie is confident: “There are so many people out there cheering us on,” she says. “It’s like Christmas every week when I open the newspaper.”

THIS AIN’T CARY, Y’ALL

Although at first Garner appears to be just another former small town engulfed by Raleigh sprawl, Citizen staffers make it very clear, their town is NOT Cary. So while in-growth has increased rapidly in recent years, the town situated just southeast of Raleigh still boasts a significant indigenous population of Garner natives.

“Garner has a very strong sense of identity,” explains Paul. As an example, Debbie points to the annual turnout for Garner’s Relay for Life, which she claims, eclipses the efforts of all the surrounding communities.

Also, Garner’s proximity to downtown Raleigh makes it attractive, says Barry. “Garner is closer to Raleigh than Raleigh is to Raleigh.” What used to be “the best-kept secret in Wake County,” is being discovered by families seeking small-town amenities within easy commuting distance of the big city. However, Garner is not the bedroom community it used to be, insists Barry, because the town now provides work, entertainment, lifestyle opportunities and options for its own residents. “You don’t have to leave Garner anymore,” he says.

But when you go looking for a “downtown Garner,” you will be hard- pressed to find much. Surely nothing like Mocksville with its classic tree-shaded courthouse square. Sadly, much of the Garner I saw was that mind-numbing generic American strip Sprawl Mall layout straddling highways devoid of a shred of local atmosphere, originality or character.

GIVING THEM WHAT THEY WANT

All the same, the Citizen aims at tapping in on Garner pride by “giving them a product they can’t get anywhere else,” Debbie says, pointing to two exhaustive graduation special sections devoted to the local high schools. The photographs, printed in the 32-page tab on hi-brite paper, are so crisp that they just about leap off the page.

Owners and staffers alike say they are looking forward to their first NCPA competition this coming year when they expect they’ll be in the thick of the folks walking up to the podium to collect press awards. And that wouldn’t surprise me one bit either.

ON TO WAKE FOREST

Next week I get to take a sentimental journey back to old Wake Forest, where the Allen family, in some iteration, has owned the Wake Weekly since the early ’50s. My own association with the Allens dates back to the ’70s when I had my own community paper. Since then, it has been my remarkable pleasure to watch the Wake Weekly grow into one of the state’s very finest weeklies.

I can’t wait to find out what they’re up to this summer. Stay tuned.

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.

WELCOME TO MOCKSVILLE

Turn left off the mind-numbing sameness of 1-40 thirty minutes west of Winston-Salem and almost magically find yourself driving through the soundstage of Meredith Willson’s THE MUSIC MAN: An old-fashioned picture postcard tree-canopied county seat downtown square dominated by a classic 19th century cupola’d courthouse with IN GOD WE TRUST emblazoned over the white columns.

Ringing the square are law offices, eateries and local small-town businesses with names like the coffee shop Kool Beanz. Not a national franchise chain store in the lot.

Big city reporters would call Mocksville “sleepy,” but I find it just right. Diagonal parking along the main street forces traffic to creep and defer to pedestrians. The sweet pace of life makes me jealous. (To my way of thinking, Chapel Hill shot itself in the foot years ago when they did away with diagonal parking on Franklin Street, where pedestrians like me take our lives in our hands trying to get across the 100 block.)

But Mocksville (locals pronounce it MOCKS-vul) feels just the right size to me, several thousand folks who clearly love it here. The New York native who runs the Davie County Senior Center is one, telling me she couldn’t take the frantic pace of nearby Winston-Salem. She loves the town and the neighbors who “let me know right away— no running power equipment on Sunday.

That pretty much says it all — that and the chimes of the Mocksville First United Methodist Church playing old hymns at noon. The kind of place where at the Senior Center a retired Baptist preacher kept wanting to know “What’s your church affiliation?” until I told him I was a fallen-away Unitarian.

BEEN THERE SINCE DIRT

Most everybody who works at the Davie County Enterprise Record and Clemmons Courier has been there “since dirt.” Veteran Editor-Publisher Dwight Sparks, with 24 years behind the mast, knows his staff is committed to their paper and the community.

It never fails, but when I find a town like Mocksville, I imagine cloning myself into whoever is lucky enough to run the local community newspaper.

Today it’s Dwight Sparks, who’s been a fixture in the local journalism world for 24 years.

But compared to some other staffers, the editor-publisher of the two papers is a newcomer.

So it didn’t take long to figure out one of the major reasons for their success. In a word, it’s continuity. Just look at this line-up.

Sara Campbell, who just turned 85, started at the Enterprise Record in 1946 and has been there 63 years. Now she just works on Wednesdays when the paper comes out, and some people refuse to buy the paper from anyone other than Sara herself. Dwight tells me she’s said many times that she wants to die at her desk.

Legendary photographer James Barringer, who just turned 70, started in 1965 and been there 44 years. To this day he still takes drop-dead great prep sports photos.

Vivacious General Manager Robin Snow started in 1973 and has been there 36 years — long enough, in her words “to have made photographs of three generations.”

Check out these other employment records:

Clemmons Courier secretary Kay Henderson, 25 years.

Courier sports editor Chris Mackie, 23 years.

Enterprise Record Managing Editor Mike Barnhardt, 24 years.

Advertising Director Ray Tutterow, 19 years.

E-R Sports Editor Brian Pitts, 14 years.

Staffer Jeannie Trotter, 14 years.

Staffer Jackie Seabolt, nine years.

Staffer Linda Morison, eight years.

And Dwight points to two “county correspondents” with even longer track records. In an email, Dwight writes, “Our ‘Advance News’ and “Four Corners New’ writers have both been at it for 50 years.”

So you can safely assume that Dwight runs a “happy shop,” the kind of place people love to work at. Fact is, that’s exactly what they told me. “We love this newspaper,” vowed Robin. “This is our newspaper.”

The bald truth is that it’s legally owned by folks in Charleston, but the psychosocial-spiritual ownership lies here, AND with the enviable reader loyalty exhibited by the approx. 2,000 paying readers of the Courier and the 9,000 paid subscribers of the Enterprise

Record, some of whom insist on buying the paper on Wednesday even though they’ll get it in the mail the next day!

What does this sort of staff commitment gain the papers, I asked? Access and trust, they told me quickly. “I don’t need a press pass,” says Robin. Politicians often time their announcements and law enforcement officials schedule their busts and perp walks to Tuesday afternoon so the local weeklies can get the scoop.

In my humble view, these two papers are perfect examples of the “beloved institution” of which MLK spoke. Dwight observes, “The years we have invested in this community is remarkable.”

The community has noticed. Even in this lousy economy, there are local businesses that advertise with the papers, I learn, just because they “understand they need to support their local newspaper.”

HISTORY ON THEIR SIDE

As Dwight explained, the first paper in the region was the Record, started in 1899 as a Republican Party paper. Next came the Cooleemee Journal in 1901, and then the Enterprise in 1916, the Democratic Party paper. The Enterprise and Record merged in 1958. The Cooleemee paper was significant because it was the first (or one of the first) papers in the state to go “cold type” or offset in 1965. That technology allowed them to run huge photographs that impressed everybody — and to this day, the legacy of the Cooleemee Journal can be seen in the photo-heavy, family-oriented pages of both papers, printed expertly at the Salisbury Post.

RIGHT ON THE SQUARE

Both papers got an A+ on the Lauterer Accessibility Test. That’s where I walk in the front door unannounced and ask to see the editor or publisher. Papers where I can “walk right in” score the highest. Papers with locked newsrooms, keypad entry only, a receptionist Nazi, video cameras and/or a uniformed guard with a gun flunk my test.

Lauterer’s “Virtuous Triangle” goes like this: the more Accessibility the public has, then more likely the community journalist is to feel Accountable, and therefore the more Accurate he or she will try to be.

Here’s another of my litmus tests: is the paper office located centrally downtown so pedestrian traffic is facilitated and even encouraged? Again, Mocksville particularly gets another A.

So I barged right in the office (located smack-dab across the square from the Courthouse), with the old heavy glass and wooden door creaking just like your Aunt Maude’s. It was the homiest sound, and there to greet me with a smile (me, a rank stranger) was Sara, who, when we got to talking about her age, said with a smile, “I’m kind of like that old door; the older I get, the squeakier I become.”

THE HOOVER ADAMS FORMULA

Veteran publisher Hoover Adams of the Dunn Daily Record is famous for saying that his paper’s formula for success is simple: just run lots and lots of photos of local people.

OK, so let’s put these two papers to the Hoover Adams Test.

In a random issue of the Enterprise Record, I counted 154 identifiable faces in that week’s 30-page broadsheet. In the 26-page broadsheet Courier, I counted 160 faces (many ID’ed in the caption too). Multiply 314 times 8 (all the family folks, etc. who care) …and you get 2,512 local people impacted this week alone by just the photos in these papers. Don’t you think they’re gonna want to buy the paper? You betcha.

This is no accident. “We run lots of big pictures of kids,” Robin says. “We can make stars out of middle school and high school kids, and they’re a star for a week.”

Speaking of school coverage, both papers mine their local schools relentlessly. Up at Clemmons, there’s been a 30-year tradition of high schoolers writing “The Titan Tattler” column for the Courier. Students come begging to write for the paper, Dwight says. Repeat: begging.

THE NEWSPAPER OF RECORD

When I asked Dwight and his staff to “assess their assets,” here’s something else he mentioned: “We are the old newspaper of public record,” meaning that they run arrests, court records, fire/police/arrest log, tax liens and legal ads. In fact, the Clemmons Courier, located in the southwestern edge of Forsyth County, gets the county’s legals because as one staffer told me, the major metro paper has “priced itself out of the market…We’re racking up on their stupidity.”

NOT ALL SUNSHINE CARE BEARS AND RAINBOWS

Eighty-five-year-old Sara Campbell, who has worked at the paper for 63 years, says, “This is a town that loves to know everybody’s business.”

So what are their weaknesses, the greatest challenges they’re facing? Not surprisingly, “Ads are a struggle,” concedes Advertising Director Tutterow, with formerly dependable real estate and automotive advertising down significantly. “They’re just not advertising,” he says.

But the papers are profitable, and Sara Campbell thinks that’s due in part to their relative isolation, particularly Mocksville, located midway between Winston-Salem to the east and Statesville to the west. “We’re the only paper here…and doing well because they’re no competition — and we’re a FAMILY paper too!”

The absentee ownership factor in distant Charleston, S.C., has not been without its speedbumps, with some furloughs and the loss of one part-time ad typesetter. Corporate did move all the classified ad administration to the larger paper in Salisbury, a change that chaffs some staffers used to controlling all their content in-house. But compared to their big-city cousins where entire newsrooms have been decimated, this is nothing and they know it. “As long as we are profitable,” says Dwight, “they leave us alone.” And there is absolutely no prior restraint on news content.

ONLINE

The Enterprise Record has a fairly handsome nothin’-fancy online version, (though I truly detest those winking/blinking adds poking me like a stick in the eye). All the same, there’s veteran photographer James Barringer’s consistently excellent sports photos to anchor the sports page…a local angle on the H1N1 flu, and a lead story about gangs (gangs?!) in rural Davie County. Good reading…until you get to the end of the brief, where it abruptly stops, and then you see “SUBSCRIBE TO THE DAVIE COUNTY ENTERPRISE…ETC.”

Pretty clever marketing, if you ask me. They get you hooked and then jerk away the carrot. Hmmm. How much do they want, I wondered. See? It worked for me and I don’t even live here! I like this online model: a taste for free but you pay for the whole enchilada. If I lived here, I’d shell out for sure.

But truth be told, the e-version of both the Courier and the Enterprise Record don’t hold a candle to the print product. And I think it’s obvious they’re putting their best efforts into their proven, profitable hold-and-fold newsPAPER. The online version, clearly, is a work-in-progress.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Dwight is also the editor of the Clemmons Courier 11 miles back toward Winston-Salem. The two towns of Clemmons and Mocksville couldn’t be more different. After driving around Clemmons for an hour looking for its center, I conclude it’s been “Caryized.” There is no there there. What there is is one after another boring homogonous tickytacky developments with predictably boring names: Asbury Place, Meadowbrook, Hampton Way. I’m sure wonderful people live here, but I mourn for this McCity, an exurb to Winston-Salem. Creating a sense of community at the newspaper must be a stretch.

Regulars head for a great lunch at Snook’s Old Fashion Barbecue on NC 158 between Clemmons and Mocksville.

AUTHENTIC NORTH CAROLINA

Leaving the sameness of Clemmons and Driving west on 158 back toward Mocksville, not far from Dutchman’s Creek you come to rolling farmland of nodding blue bachelor buttons blooming — and suddenly there is Andy’s General Store and “Snook’s Old Fashion Barbecue” — and you know that all is still right with the world.

At Andy’s store (glass counters, wooden floors) nothing much has changed in 40 years, and you can still get Moravian Chicken Pies there. Across the highway and over at the corner of Juney Beauchamps Road, Snook’s BBQ joint caused my car to mysteriously do a U-turn.

A gaggle of oddly-arranged clunky little buildings huddle around a parking lot filled with pick-up trucks: a sure barometer recommending a great good place.

Rita Reavis offers a first-timer a test taste of Snook’s delicious barbecue. Nothin’ could be finer.

Inside the tiny take-out booth, Rita Reavis offers me, an obvious “first-timer,” a forkful of BBQ for my culinary inspection. She did this completely on her own; I did not ask. But I did receive. Truthfully, I wasn’t even hungry, but how’s any true Tar Heel gonna pass up an honest-to-God-greasy-spots-on-the-brown-paper-bag BBQ joint? Exactly. I chowed down.

On the walls inside Snook’s I spot a framed yellowed newspaper clipping from 1984 spotlighting Rita’s dad, Snook, in the Clemmons Courier. And what was the by-line on that full-page feature? Who else? Dwight Sparks!

As I’m leaving, Rita hollers at me, “You come back and have some banana pie, now!”

THE FORMULA

Before leaving Mocksville, I swing through Rich Park, an oasis of a mid-town forested park within the town limits, complete with picnic shelters, nature trails and manicured baseball fields, around the outfield fence stand the large advertising signs from long-time local businesses that made that ball field possible: Graham Funeral Home, Caudell Lumber, O’Reilly Auto Parts… and then my eyes rest on another long-time local business that is a community institution right there amid the others…“Davie County Enterprise Record.”

Why am I not surprised?

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.)

But I never lost touch with Ron, nor did I ever stop revering and respecting him. Ask anyone who ever knew Ron: he could be in turn loud, irreverent, fun-loving, outrageous and boisterous — but at the same time he was our unflappable rock-solid leader, a newspaperman in every sense of the old expression.

Woe be unto the pompous business or civic leader who mistook Ron’s slight built for a sign of weakness.

“Powerful people would come and try to tell Ron what to do with the paper,” said friend and Forest City businessman Maxie Jolley, speaking at Ron’s memorial service on Aug. 28, “and he’d tell THEM what THEY could do with the paper!” (if you get Maxie’s drift).

“You couldn’t’ impose on the Little Giant,” Maxie said. Adding, “He bought ink by the barrel and wasn’t afraid to use it!”

Or, as his daughters wrote in their tribute: “He was a DO-It man, not a say-It man.”

Ron left behind not just a loving family and a grieving community, but also a veritable THIS WEEK and Daily Courier alumni association. Over his 29 years as editor, he ran what many considered one of the state’s best community journalism graduate schools. “Graduates” include New York Times best-selling novelist Tony Earley and Asheville Citizen-Times Editorial Page Editor Joy Franklin, the latter of whom will never forget when she misspelled “threadbare” and received the following note from Ron:

“There are black bears; there are brown bears; there are grizzly bears; there are teddy bears, but there are no THREAD BEARS, you dumb@%*!”

Joy concludes, “Only Ron Paris could call you a dumb@%* and somehow make you feel it was a term of endearment.”

Tony Earley remembers the time as a cub reporter when he returned from a particularly fractious town council meeting, telling Ron, “If I write the truth, those people will come down here and kill me!” — to which Ron responded evenly, “You write the truth; I’ll take care of the calls.”

And you can bet the little giant did just that.

My memories of 11 wonderful years of working with Ron (with nary a angry word between us!) flash like a slide show with images of both the serious and comedic: cutting up in the backshop, installing the press, putting it all on the line editorially and financially when we came out pro-ABC in a historically dry county, covering the harrowing dragnet of a cop-killer, or the time Ron and I rode a bicycle-built-for-two down a major highway construction project to get a first-hand look at the progress.

We were always describing ourselves as “intrepid” reporters, quipping upon such zany occasions: “Bet they don’t do THIS at the Charlotte Observer.”

After selling the paper to Paxton Media Group in 1998, Ron threw himself into local humanitarian volunteer work, notably as a leader with Habitat for Humanity, the Jaycees, the United Way, the McNair Foundation, the local community college and Smart Start. Ron will also be remembered as past president of the NCPA, three-term member of the NCPA board and School of Journalism Foundation of N.C., Inc. board member.

I saw Ron for the last time this summer a month before he died. In spite of the obvious toll the cancer was taking on him, Ron had just come in from installing bathroom tile. We sat there over lunch telling newspaper war stories from old times, cackling like schoolboys. I shall miss him terribly, my veritable older brother, unstoppable and irrepressible to the end. And still showing me the way.

Join me in honoring Ron by contributing to a scholarship fund in his name. The Ron Paris Prize will be awarded to an outstanding N.C. student specializing in community journalism. Checks should be made out to The School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Ron Paris Fund, and sent to Jock Lauterer, 213 Carroll Hall, campus box 3365, UNC-CH. Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-3365

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.�?

After the stroke, Al spent two months in the hospital and then three months in outpatient care. Meanwhile, third-generation owners of the Ledger, Charles and Ronnie Critcher, held Al’s job until he felt able to return.

“I’m very fortunate to have come here,�? he vows. “They’ve been really good to me.�?

A DURHAM HERALD-SUN REFUGEE

How Al came to the Ledger in the first place is a story. The Rocky Mount native majored in geography at ECU and then “sorta just fell into�? stringing for the local paper, finally in 1973 finding his way to the Durham Herald-Sun, where for 32 years he covered sports, food and features until the infamous “Black Monday,�? Jan. 3, 2005, when the new owner, Paxton Media Group, “kicked me out�? along with a host of folks who’d spent the better part of their careers in Durham.

“When you cut all your people (in the newsroom) who know anything about Durham…�? Al shakes his head in wonder, “It’s really BIZARRE!�?

He knocked around for a while, looked at a couple of offers, but then picked Oxford due to its proximity to his wife’s teaching job. Starting as a staff writer, he was promoted to editor after nine months when the former editor moved on.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF EDITOR

Since the stroke, Al has had to make many adaptations, like learning how to type left-handed while using his right pointer finger occasionally for shift-function commands, getting around town on the scooter, and walking slowly but determinedly around the office using a cane. But even his disability gets the joke treatment.

“I tell `em I do the 100 in 10 flat…(I don’t tell `em that’s 10 minutes!�?)

No, Al can’t get out and cover breaking local news like he used to, “But I tell people, `If you’ve got a 12-pound cabbage, bring it to the (paper) office and I’ll take a picture of it!’�?

Oxford folks have rallied around their stricken editor. “The community was tremendous in their support of me,�? Al exclaims. “People who didn’t know me except through the paper…�?

“Now a deputy sheriff brings ME the police report! This community — we couldn’t have this paper without them. When people call up and ask: `Can you cover such and such?’ I have to tell them, `No, but if you take a picture and bring in a write-up, we’ll run it.’ That’s what it’s all about at this point.�?

So he concentrates on what he can do. Which is considerable by any measure. “I’m the editor…�? he explains wryly, “… the editorial page editor, the food editor, the features editor — and if you can think of any other editors, I’m them too!�?

Like many a community newspaper editor, Al’s job isn’t over when the paper comes off the Ledger’s 1972 King press. Not only did he used to help insert sections of the twice-weekly 6,500-circulation Ledger — but Al still gets out there on his scooter and delivers papers. “It’s a good way to meet people and get to know your community,�? he explains.

TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

Al has put his college degree in geography to good use. He’s come up with concept that I like to call Carson’s Theory of Geographic Determinalism.�? And it goes something like this: Granville County is bisected roughly west to east by the Tar River, leading Al to postulate: “All the sane people (in the county) live north of the Tar, yeah! And all the crazy people live south of the Tar.�?

Carson’s reasoned explanation for the southern Granville affliction: “They’re too close to Raleigh, yessir!�?

Makes sense to me.

HIS REAL CLAIM TO FAME

The self-proclaimed “Hot Dog Man,�? Al is arguably the Tar Heel state’s leading authority on that humble but beloved Southern delicacy.

Al’s recipe for the perfect dog goes like this: “First of all, it’s not a health food. A hot dog has gotta have grease. Then you gotta have a steamed bun with the mustard on the BOTTOM. That sorta waterproofs the bun. Then you put in your hot dog, next the onions (a hot dog without onions is just not worth eating) then the chili next so the grease goes DOWN, and finally you put the homemade slaw on top…and it’s incredible!�?

Warming to his subject, Al continues, “Now, here’s how you know if you’ve got a good hot dog. You know how they wrap `em in that wax paper and put `em in a brown paper bag? Well, when you carry that bag out to the car and put it in on the car seat, by the time you get back, if you don’t have grease on your car seat, then you don’t have a good hot dog! And that’s a fact!�?

The Hot Dog Man of Granville County has done his research. According to Al, the best hot dogs around can be found at: Jones Drug Store and Buy-Rite Grocery and Grill in Oxford, Bill’s in “Little�? Washington, Dick’s in Wilson, Booney’s in Rocky Mount, Shorty’s in Wake Forest, Warren’s in Greenville and Paschall’s Grill in Durham.

Reading Al’s column, “From the back burner,�? I’m delighted to learn that this week he ended “an 18-month cheeseburger drought�? and “broke bad,�? doing a 180 from the life-saving vegetarian diet his wife has him on.

Al rhapsodized: “I had a double cheeseburger my way, with mustard, chili, onion, slaw and dill pickles. It was nirvana never known by any fast food chain. Every bite was a sloppy, juicy heavenly mouthful of flavor with real, cooked-to-order, fresh, hand-patted hamburger.�?

If your mouth ain’t watering by now, you are just plain weird.

And I know the Hot Dog (Cheeseburger) Man of Granville County would agree.

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.

Scott’s SMN has won NCPA weekly press awards five years running for investigative reporting. And in fact, that’s Scott’s successful formula: instead of trying to be just another typical small-town mountain weekly, the SMN prides itself on issue-oriented, in-depth, long-form, thought-provoking pieces relevant to the region — a four county area west of Asheville.

Thus the SMN is able to successfully compete with at least four incumbent, more traditional community papers in Haywood, Jackson, Swain and Macon counties. It is this very branding and positioning that sets the SMN apart from the Highlander of Highlands, the Cashiers Crossroads Courier, the Sylva Herald and Ruralite, the Smoky Mountain Times of Bryson City and the Mountaineer in Waynesville.

“The most important thing we do,�? Scott says, “is the choices we make of which stories we do.�?

And so, flipping through two issues (40-44 pp tab format) of the SMN we find fearless 40-80-inch investigative pieces on issues surrounding the troubled local hospital in Haywood County, the closing of a local railroad, building woes surrounding a problematic local highway, and multiple running stories on mountain area growth and development.

In fact, this year the SMN won first place in community service by a community newspaper in the NCPA awards program for their exhaustive coverage of growth and development in the mountains.

“We are not a traditional community newspaper,�? Scott wrote to me earlier, “but have hung our hat on doing the longer enterprise and investigative pieces most papers just don’t do anymore. There is especially a dearth of this kind of coverage from small papers.�?

So, don’t look for obituaries, local weddings, or photos of big tomatoes or grinning little leaguers in the SMN. But DO expect kick-butt-take-names coverage of all the heavyweight issues in the region.

The Smoky Mountain News, which Scott labels a “hybrid community paper,�? seems to have hit upon a formula for success.

In addition, the SMN has a lively and live editorial section — plus a host of specialty columnists covering books, A&E, gardening, nature, outdoors and music.

Oh, and did I mention, the SMN is profitable? Led by veteran ad director Greg Boothroyd, the SMN just won 11 first place awards in this year’s NCPA Ad and Design awards program.

Another canny business decision: McLeod and Boothroyd publish a host of special-interest niche magazines including slick four-color productions for area Chambers of Commerce, home and design customers, a fine arts and antiques magazine, a guide to the 25-year-old Folkmoot international folk and dance festival, and high-end Smoky Mountain Living, a general interest magazine edited by Susan Lefler of Brevard (but originally from Chapel Hill!).

And a final testimony to this unusual newspaper’s internal health, when I visited I witnessed what I call a “happy shop,�? in which I got the very clear impression that most of the reporters and graphics folks (20-30-somethings) had been there for years and had no intention of leaving.

A visit to such a vibrant community newspaper newsroom always leaves me wishing:

a.    I worked here
b.    I could bring a journalism class here
c.    And that I could beam down to this newsroom room all the newspaper industry funeral-goers.

Check them out at smokymountainnews.com

North Carolina dual newspaper cities include Asheville, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Durham, Raleigh, Fayetteville and Wilmington.

North Carolina dual newspaper towns include: Asheboro, North Wilkesboro, the Outer Banks, West Jefferson, Oriental, Littleton, Forest City, Mooresville, Lake Norman, Kannapolis, Chapel Hill, Newland, Burgaw, Boone, Monroe/Weddington, Morehead City/Beaufort, Belhaven, Carrboro, Mount Airy, Elkin, Statesville, Waynesville, Highlands, Cherokee, Murphy, Hayesville, Bryson City, Sylva and Cashiers.

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.

Introducing Roberts, NCPA President Tim Dearman, publisher of the Statesville Record and Landmark, saluted Roberts as “a native son of North Carolina who never forgot the lessons he learned here.”

Roberts, a Pulitzer-Prize winning former managing editor of the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer (17 Pulitzers from the latter) and co-author of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Race Beat,” got his start at a small community daily paper, the Goldsboro News-Argus in Wayne County, where he was the farm reporter.

There, the UNC-CH grad made a name for himself with the well-read feature titled “Rambling Through Rural Wayne,” which contained, in Roberts’ own words, “family reunions, recipes for sage sausage, sweet potatoes who looked like Gen. Charles de Gaulle…so the world could be exploding, but the Rambling in Rural Wayne had to come out.”

Let me share two emblematic Roberts stories that he allowed me to print in the third edition of my textbook and field guide, “Community Journalism: Relentlessly Local” (UNC Press, 2006.)

WHAT REALLY MATTERS

In 1968, more than 10 years after leaving the News-Argus, Roberts was sent to Vietnam as a war correspondent for the New York Times. During the height of the TET offensive, he found his way to the embattled city of Hue, the scene of the most intense, street-to-street fighting. One day, he went to interview beleaguered U.S. troops dug deep in an underground bunker. He introduced himself, “My name is Gene Roberts. I’m with the New York Times…�?

But out of the gloom Roberts heard a soldier’s voice with a distinctive twang.

“Hey!�? the soldier exclaimed, “Did you ever write the `Rambling in Rural Wayne’ in the Goldsboro News-Argus?�?

Looking back on that experience, Roberts chuckles. He may have been a big-time war correspondent for the vaunted New York Times, but what impressed that soldier in the bunker in Hue was Roberts’ farm column in an 8,000-circulation community newspaper in the rural South. No matter the size, it was the soldier’s hometown paper, a thing of inestimable value.

“I learned valuable lessons from the News-Argus and my tobacco farmer readers,�? says Roberts. “Because I was linked closely to events that were important to farm families, I—and what I wrote—became important to readers in a way that I never was, before or since.�?

SHOW, DON’T TELL

Roberts likes to tell how Henry Belk, his mentor and the former editor of the News-Argus, used to edit copy. Because Belk was blind, Roberts would have to read his stories out loud to the old editor.

Blind Henry Belk would sit there in his big oak armchair, head titled back, the warm humid air blowing in off the city square, listening intently as Gene would read his pieces aloud. And if a story didn’t work or didn’t suit old Henry Belk, he’d cry out loud, “MAKE ME SEE IT, GENE. MAKE ME SEE IT.�?

ZIG INSTEAD OF ZAG

Here at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Roberts created a prize to reward annually the student journalist who is also a good storyteller. You can hear Roberts’ words sing in the following challenge, engraved upon the plaque in Carroll Hall:

The Eugene L. Roberts Prize is meant to encourage and is dedicated to the story of the untold event that oozes instead of breaks, to the story that reveals, not repeats, to the reporter who zigs instead of zags, to the truth, as opposed to the facts, to the forest, not just the trees, to the story they’ll be talking about in the coffee shop on main street, to the story that answers not just who what where when and why but also, “So what?�?; to efforts at portraying real life itself; to journalism that “wakes me up, and makes me see�?; to the revival of the disappearing storyteller.

COMMUNITY JOURNALISM MATTERS MORE NOW THAN EVER

Roberts, who is now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, also told me, “Nothing is more important to American journalism than the editor who sees the people he covers every day.”

Imagine that.

And finally, in accepting the North Carolinian of the Year award, Roberts quipped with characteristic dry wit, “Thank you for naming me North Carolinian of the Year. Actually, I feel like a North Carolinian year-in and year-out.”

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.

A GOOD NEWSPAPER IN A GOOD COMMUNITY

It’s no accident. The Pilot is a zesty, vital, all-local, visually striking example of what a community newspaper can and should be.

Their understated motto, “A good newspaper in a good community,�? could be more accurate with a couple of greats substituted for those goods.

I give long-time editor Ed Harper much of the credit for crafting this paper into a legendary winner, though Ed will tell you he simply stewards the work of his parents, the late James M. Harper Jr. and the redoubtable Margaret Harper, 91. After years of 70-80 hour work weeks and a heart attack, Ed has wisely begun taking more time for his personal life, yet he still “pilots�? the ship with a sure hand.

OUT FRONT ONLINE TOO

And they’ve been way out front in the e-world too. Since the mid-`90s, the online version of the Pilot has been an industry leader. Check it out for yourself at stateportpilot.com.

You’ll see readable section fronts, with a simple rail on the right with hyperlinked listings that will connect you to your beach rental options. Very useful and very cool. And since nearby Oak Island is “my beach,�? I’ve been using the stateportpilot.com as my real estate portal for years.

Oh, and be sure to check out the State Port Pilot Webcam for a panoramic live view of the harbor. Not to shabby for a weekly, huh?

And now, Pilot print version subscribers get to view every online page free in PDF version (for the annual in-county print subscription cost of $18). I think that’s exactly the direction community papers should be going.

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION

For those folks who’ve never been to the charming harbor town of Southport, it’s ideally situated about 45 minutes south of Wilmington on the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Like most attractive coastal communities, Southport has experienced boom-time growth in a robust local economy that has been the financial engine for the Pilot (though Harper says the real estate market has cooled somewhat). All the same, the 10k circulation Wednesday weekly is still chocka-block with real estate ads. The two editions I perused were both a hefty 84 pages. All local. All locally produced. Not a shred of canned copy. Drop-dead photos by brother Jim Harper anchor the paper visually throughout.

Instead of sending their profits to Sacramento, the Pilot plows earnings back into the community: The staffbox lists 23 employees, including four editors, a general manager, photographer and FIVE WRITERS.

That’s more reporters than many small dailies.

And back in the height of the ‘01-02 recession, Ed built a gorgeous 6,000-square-foot newspaper building smack-dab in the middle of Southport. To my mind, the Pilot’s office, with its sky-lighted atrium entrance, is a real testament to the past, present and future of community journalism.

But the Pilot is not without competition. The Landmark-owned Brunswick Beacon of Shallotte, a hefty and excellent weekly in its own right, stakes out western Brunswick County, while the newest entry into the Brunswick circulation wars is the Wilmington Star News‘ “Brunswick Star News,�? a zoned edition that Harper maintains has had no impact onthe Pilot’s bottom line.

And since turnabout is fair play, Ed recently launched “The North Brunswick Pilot�? that contains a lot of original content from the high-growth Leland area.

A SUMMER TO REMEMBER

Little wonder then that I wanted to place a top-drawer UNC J-schooler at the Pilot for a summer internship.

My pick was Colin Campbell, this year’s Batten Community Journalism Award-winner. A rising senior from Charlottesville, Va., Colin excelled this past spring as co-editor of the Carrboro Commons, the lab e-paper produced by the Community Journalism class.

So I was sure Colin would be a solid addition to the Pilot staff, while at the same time learning from the likes of real world “perfessers�? Harper, veteran Associate Editor Terry Pope and News Editor Lee Hinnant (the latter of whom earned his press cred from eight years at the Tampa Trib and 14 years with the High family’s excellent News Reporter up the road in Whiteville.)

In my book, it’s no accident that the best community papers are “teaching papers,�? with newsrooms where enlightened editors realize and embrace their multiple roles of editing, leading, managing the paper AND teaching young journalists.

IN THE CATBIRD SEAT

My hopes were confirmed during my visit last week at the Pilot where it was obvious that Colin is having one unforgettable summer. He’s getting to do a little bit of everything, including “more photography than I expected,�? he says — which is exactly whey I stress basic photo in both my newswriting and community journalism classes.

As Colin is finding out, sometimes he even beats the competition with his little point-and-shoot.

Along the way this summer Colin has done a variety of stories, including the usual DBI stories (Dull But Important) like coverage of the town budget - but also stories that he’ll long remember. His favorite is a piece he did about a free medical clinic staffed by local volunteer doctors and nurses who spend up to 10 hours a day helping folks who otherwise might go untreated. One woman told Colin that the New Hope Clinic had saved her life.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

The skyrocketing gas prices have slapped everybody in the wallet (the Roadshow too!) and newspaper folks everywhere are looking for creative ways to handle it.

Pilot staff writer Jonathan Spiers, who covers many stories in the northern end of the county, a 30-minute drive from the newsroom, saves time and money by working out of Internet coffee shops.

And Ed has instituted a flex-time policy that allows his reporters to work from home one day a week, saving time and gas and keeping his campers happy.

No doubt about it, yet another reason why folks love working at the State Port Pilot. I’m sure Colin will come back to Chapel Hill in August with a scrapbook full of great clips and memories.