Speaking Personally: Building tomorrow’s unflinching local news

Filing into a Springfield auditorium 15 minutes late, four children in tow, I was nervous and excited to hear Eric Meyer speak in person. His talk at the Hatch Auditorium was the highlight of the annual Ozark Press Association Convention that I attended last week. 

 

With unabashed admiration for this modern-day champion of the free press, I had been following the story of this small newspaper in Kansas since 2023. I even wrote a column about the reaction within the newspaper community at large and my observation that what happened in Marion, Kan. in 2023 could have happened anywhere.

 

It’s true what they say about meeting your heroes. My starry-eyed admiration fizzled pretty quickly as I heard Meyer’s disparaging comments about law enforcement officers in general and observed his apparent sense of superiority. 

To be fair, after what he’s been through, Meyer has every reason to view the profession of law enforcement with suspicion. In my wanton admiration, I had read everything I could find about the raid, but details in Wednesday’s talk were new to me. 

 

Yet, I listened with a dismal familiarity as Meyer laid out the small-town grudges and secrets that led to the search that has prompted a multi-million-dollar lawsuit, a front page of the New York Times, an upcoming HBO documentary, and ultimately the death of his 98-year-old mother. The cast of characters involved a police officer with a checkered past, a waitress with a love/hate relationship with the newspaper (and an open secret of a long-suspended driver’s license), and about a half a dozen small grudges over reporting, or even mere inquiries, done by the Marion County Record.

 

The seizure of all the newsroom computers and phones in pursuit of a single public document, alleged to have been illegally obtained by the newspaper, is an extreme example of the intimidation I know every good journalist has faced. Despite overwhelming difficulties, and the tragic death of Meyers’ mother the day after the raid, the Record made it to press with an iconic headline: SEIZED BUT NOT SILENCED.

 

When I say it sounds familiar, I mean that I recognize Meyer’s experience in the small-time abuses of power that have attempted to silence this newspaper over the years. Seven years into my crash course into newspaper life, I have come to expect it when I report on controversy or uncover secrets. 

 

Representatives of two (2) local school districts have contacted businesses that advertise in the paper asking them to pressure me to retract a story or “back off.” I’ve had a school board appoint a subcommittee of members to answer my questions because they had been advised “not to engage in a dialogue” with the press. There is one city in this county where I now refuse to send inexperienced female reporters. There have been threats of lawsuits, personal insults, public insinuations of varying gravity, including my native Californian husband’s “immigration status.”

 

At the bottom of it all was solid, factual reporting exposing uncomfortable truths. It’s the promise of close scrutiny of all our local elected officials. It’s the opinion pages that bridges weeks of reporting into a single editorial position of the publication. 

 

And in this respect, Howell County News is not alone. Every small-town newspaper tackling hard news with integrity gets similar levels of backlash. It’s an occupational hazard. 

 

Refusing to bow to pressure or threats over the years has come with an unexpected blessing. Today, Howell County is a great place to train a new generation of journalists. I am prouder of this than any award, recognition, or paycheck. Public entities across the county have risen to the occasion under close scrutiny, and it has been my honor and joy to share the fruits of my labor with three young reporters this year. 

 

We started with a summer intern, and regular readers will have noticed, have added two more reporters-in-training to the staff for the school year. After seven years as this publication’s main reporter, it feels absolutely luxurious to invest in the future of local reporting with the help of our talented interns, Caleb Solik and Addison Smith.

 

Shifting from a beat reporter to a teacher has afforded us the chance to take advantage of another opportunity. Ron and I recently purchased three new titles based in Lebanon, Mo.: The Laclede County Record, The Weekly Trader, and Trout Talk. The Lebanon newspaper is an institution that has been in print for 160 years and owned by the same family for the last 80 years. It’s an incredibly humbling vote of confidence by the Wright family of Lebanon Publishing, Co. to allow us to continue their storied legacy. 

 

As we shape the new (to us) publication this fall and welcome our new baby girl this winter, you may notice that I will be personally a little absent from Howell County, but it’s one of the great honors of my life to fade into the background in the role of teacher and editor and let new talent shine in the pages of Howell County News. I’m not gone – the news office is still on Main Street, and we’ll be burning up the highway between Willow Springs and Lebanon.

 

My hope is our readers will get all the substantial reporting they expect from the News, but more personality and charm as some very talented young people get their first bylines in these pages. 

 

I can’t be sure – but I think, at long last, I finally have a publisher’s job – instead of all the jobs. I don’t expect the pressure to let up because I don’t expect the quality of the reporting to change. But I do get to position myself as a shield between the onslaught and the newsroom staff- something I never had.

 

I’ve often used this page to argue that local journalism is thriving in the Ozarks. It’s time to take the skills, courage, and determination I’ve learned in Howell County and teach it to young journalists to preserve it for the next generation of readers. 

 

Because unflinching local journalism is worth growing for. It’s worth sacrificing for. It’s worth stepping back and seeing other people’s names on awards. It’s a new chapter of my  career that I’m honored to begin.