Emus Loose in Egnar

Judy Muller

Description

At a time when mainstream news media are hemorrhaging and doomsayers are predicting the death of journalism, take heart: the First Amendment is alive and well in small towns across America. In Emus Loose in Egnar, award-winning journalist Judy Muller takes the reader on a grassroots tour of rural American newspapers, from an Indian reservation in Montana to the Alaska tundra to Martha’s Vineyard, and discovers that many weeklies are not just surviving, but thriving.

 

In these small towns, stories can range from club news to Klan news, from broken treaties to broken hearts, from banned books to escaped emus; they document the births, deaths, crimes, sports, and local shenanigans that might seem to matter only to those who live there. And yet, as this book shows us, these “little” stories create a mosaic of American life that tells us a great deal about who we are—what moves us, angers us, amuses us.

 

Filled with characters both quirky and courageous, the book is a heartening reminder that there is a different kind of “bottom line” in the hearts of journalists who keep churning out good stories, week after week, for the corniest of reasons: that our freedoms depend on it. Not that they would put it that way, necessarily. In the words of one editor in Colorado, “If we found a political official misusing taxpayer funds, we wouldn’t hesitate to nail him to a stump.”

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• News
• Types of rural communities
• Reportage
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska Paperback
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803230347
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

emus loose in egnar

Emus Loose in Egnar Big Stories from Small Towns

judy muller

university of nebraska press | lincoln and london

© 2011 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging inPublication Data Muller, Judy. Emus loose in Egnar: big stories from small towns / Judy Muller. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. isbn9780803230163 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Community newspapers — United States. 2. Journalism, Regional — United States. 3. Reporters and reporting — United States. I. Title. pn4784.c73m85 2011 071'.3 — dc22 2010051804

Set in Scala by Bob Reitz. Designed by Nathan Putens.

For my students

contents

 Acknowledgments ix

 Prologue 1

1 Everything Old Is New Again 11

2 Crusaders 31

3 Curmudgeons 61

4 Too Close for Comfort 91

5 This Town Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us 113

6 All the Names Unfit to Print 155

7 Never Speak Ill of the Dead 173

8 School Sports: Holy Hyperbole! 193

9 They Don’t Make ’Em Like That Anymore 207

10 Coming Home 231

 Bibliography 245

acknowledgments

Without the expert guidance of Al Cross of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, I would never have known where to begin this journey. He pointed me in the direction of the editor of theCanadian Recordin Texas, Laurie Ezzell Brown, whose courage and pas sion continue to inspire me. Laurie and her staff went out of their way to make me feel welcome in Canadian, even as they hustled to get out that week’s paper. Over the last two years, I have encountered the same grace under pressure from editors all over the country; taking the time to talk about themselves and their work while trying todotheir work was no easy task.  And so I want to thank all those who gave so graciously of their very valuable time: Jason Miller, M. E. Sprengelmeyer, Ben Gish, Bill Bishop, Tom Bethell, Bruce Anderson, Mark Scaramella, Jim Stiles, Adrien Taylor, Bill Boyle, Linda and Doug Funk, Wes Eben, Michael Dillin, Jim Eshleman, Scott Russell, Ben Cloud, Joe Fitzpatrick, Denny McAuliffe, Rebecca Convery, Brett Thomas DeJongh, Alex DeMarban, George Ledbetter, Kevin Bersett, Benjy Hamm, Tonda Rush, Shannon Smithey, Heather Lende, Homer Marcum, Bob Beer, Marta Tarbell, Andrew Mirrington, Ellen Metrick, and Deb Dion.  I am also grateful to my friends in Norwood: Charlie Bausch, who discovered all those yellowing copies of theNorwood Post