Gary O'Donoghue visited small-town papers in America to hear of the pressures they face during a divisive Presidential election campaign. The Marion County Record in Kansas — raided by police in August 2023, its computers and phones seized, its editor's mother dead two days later — was one of the papers we visited.
"Seized but not silenced" — the Marion County Record's front page after the police raid. The paper was still publishing when Gary arrived.
Small town papers have lost readers and revenue to digital. Their role in local communities has been challenged. And in a divisive Presidential election year, the pressures are even greater. We visited the Marion County Record in Kansas, the Wet Mountain Tribune in Colorado, and the Storm Lake Times in Iowa — three papers still doing the work of local journalism under sustained pressure from every direction.
In the documentary we also hear from the Knight Foundation and the American Journalism Project about the significance of the decline in local papers, and why initiatives to help new digital start-ups are important. From Pew Research we hear how Republican and Democrat trust in news has been eroded more at a national level than locally — the local paper, even now, retains a credibility the national media has largely lost.
The Marion County Record story is the one that stays with you. A small paper in a small Kansas town, raided by local police in what turned out to be an illegal seizure. Its computers taken. Its editor's 98-year-old mother — who had worked at the paper for years — dead of a stress-induced heart attack two days after the raid. And the paper still on the newsstand the following week. "Seized but not silenced."
That's what local journalism looks like in 2024. And that's why it matters.