This week, Oct. 5 through 11, is National Newspaper Week. Having spent most of my professional life working for newspapers, I know what you can expect in your local publications. There will be advertisements or columns, like this one, reminding you about all the good that newspapers do for their community. This includes reporting all the news and sports, keeping a watch on local government, providing a marketplace for the ads of local merchants and serving as a safe haven for legal notices.
The columns and advertisements you see explaining National Newspaper Week serve a couple of purposes. First, they remind the public about the value of subscribing and advertising in a newspaper. Second, they serve as a kind of pep talk for the people who work in journalism, reminding them of how important it is to meet the challenges they face every day when they show up for work.
Its a shame that most journalists in this state missed the best pep talk of all. That took place at the South Dakota State University Foundation on July 12 of this year at the annual meeting of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.
The society is an organization concerned with all aspects of newspaper journalism. Its members are, however, among some of the best editorial and column writers in the nation. I should know. This year I judged ISWNEs writing contest.
After the writing awards were handed out, there were other awards as well. The most prestigious of ISWNEs honors is the Eugene Cervi Award, given to the journalist who consistently acts with the conviction that good journalism begets good government.
This years winner was Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record in Kansas. Meyer never intended to be a journalism rock star, but thats what happened to him when his weekly newspaper and home were raided by police in August of 2023 in a move by local authorities that was as illegal as it was ill-advised. Local law enforcement took that unprecedented action under the false pretense that a reporter had committed identity theft by looking up a driving record on a public database.
The raid spawned national outrage, a handful of lawsuits and criminal charges against the police chief who led the raid. Erics mother, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, who was a co-owner of the newspaper, died the day after the raid after the stress of seeing her home and files rifled by police.
After teaching journalism for 20 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Eric had returned to the family newspaper as a retirement job. In retirement, however, he was not the editor of a sleepy, small-town rag. As one of the people who recommended him for the Cervi Award put it, They picked on the wrong small-town newspaper.
In accepting his award, Meyer spoke to the ISWNE crowd for 20 minutes. He needed no notes because this was his story. He told about the challenge of facing the tremendous cost of lawsuits and his luck with a judges ruling that his opponent would have to pay the newspapers legal costs. He joked about the newspapers antiquated bookkeeping system that wasnt equipped to handle the hundreds of new subscriptions coming in from supporters across the nation.
The meat of his message was that the kind of hard-hitting journalism that led up to the police raid was just the sort of thing that all newspapers should be practicing. He admonished his fellow editors and publishers to ask tough questions, write stories that made elected officials uncomfortable and maintain a strong editorial voice.
Every community should have someone like Meyer who is putting in long hours at school board and city council meetings and keeping tabs on the county commission. They need someone asking tough questions about crime in the community and the plans for economic development.
There is no chance of having an Eric Meyer or someone like him in your community if you dont make an effort to support your local newspaper. Subscribe and buy a subscription for someone who has moved away. Advertise and frequent the businesses that advertise in your local newspaper.
This country has seen many smaller newspapers struggle or close. At the same time, larger daily newspapers have cut back on the number of stories they cover. Newspaper journalism is becoming a rarity, often cherished only after its gone. Just ask the people in Brookings, Huron, Redfield and Flandreau about the gut punch they felt when their newspapers were temporarily closed this fall.
The theme of this years National Newspaper Week is Embracing Local Journalism for a Better Future. Thats a good slogan, but it misses the urgency of this moment. If readers and advertisers fail to embrace their local newspapers, theres a good chance that the future will be devoid of the kinds of stories they need to make informed decisions.
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