(twangy music) (gentle atmospheric music) - [Anne] There's really no room for cynicism in community journalism, there just isn't.

Folks wanna be able to trust us, right?

So we can't just be jerks.

You know?

Newspapers like this really prop up that fabric in a community.

(gentle atmospheric music) - We still have some diehards, they want their paper.

That's fine.

We'll do it.

- I don't think that people really do realize the importance of local journalism.

- Right now we have what?

About six or seven conglomerates, corporations who own all the main media.

Something seems to be wrong with that.

- A lot of these news organizations who ran so long on ads in the paper aren't getting that same revenue anymore.

- Valley Publishing used to have five newspapers under it.

Now, it's one.

(gentle atmospheric music) - A lot of times, these publications are the lifeblood of the people that are around them.

- [Paula] You know what is going on statewide, but you don't necessarily know what is going on in your community.

- Without that information, how can a community talk about the issues, the challenges?

You can't talk about that unless you all on the same page.

I'll leave it on her desk.

Thank you.

You can get online and read the fake news or the real news or, you know, there's a lot of good journalism happening on that level, but my readers need to know what's happening right here, and we're the only ones doing that.

(gentle country music) ♪ In the heartland ♪ We rely on ourselves ♪ And one another (gentle country music) ♪ Hand in hand ♪ We must stand ♪ In the heartland - [Presenter] Production funding for “Life In The Heart Land” was provided by.... - Can everybody agree on what is the news?

The answer is no.

- What is the news?

Huh.

The real news?

The real news is when you hear a siren on your street and it stops at your neighbor's house.

(gentle atmospheric music) - News is anything that's of interest and concern to this community.

- You have to be accountable to the community.

How do you get to the truth?

How do you get to the facts?

Like how do you make sense of your world?

- Reporting on a smaller scale is just as important as on a larger scale.

(newspaper rustling) (gentle atmospheric music) (gentle atmospheric music) (gentle atmospheric music) - If we all disappear and become news deserts...

It doesn't look pretty.

(gentle atmospheric music) Studies have shown, voter percentage drops.

The cities have trouble issuing bonds.

You know, newspaper does a lot of things people don't realize.

The price keeps going up and up and up.

Labeling the papers, sorting the papers, now delivering them to, what, half a dozen post offices ourselves.

For little mom-and-pop community newspapers like us, it's a huge burden.

- The collapse of newspapers seems to be a very regional thing.

So some newspapers will just fall off the cliff in Hanover County.

- I've seen "The Virginian-Pilot" shrink from this to this, you know?

Community papers are struggling to hold on to the definition of what they used to be.

- After all of these, you know, pay cuts and these corporations that are, you know, buying up these newspapers but don't really emphasize on the local factor.

I really don't know how journalism is still surviving, but it still is.

(chuckles) (dulcimer music) (vehicle whooshing) (gentle atmospheric music) (truck whooshing) (gentle atmospheric music) (newspapers thudding) (gentle atmospheric music) (basket clacking) (gentle atmospheric music) (gentle atmospheric music) - [Anne] One thing "The Recorder" isn't and really never has been is sort of tabloid, sensational.

Back here, folks want us to go to their kids' softball games.

They want us to be at the meetings so they don't have to.

They wanna know is this pipeline gonna ruin their well if it comes through?

Is their water clean?

They care about where they live.

- [David] Jake's Convenience.

- [Anne] Yeah.

- And then- - [Anne] Mountain View.

- Yeah, Mountain View.

(muttering indistinctly) So not only do I play Tetris by putting the page layout together, I also play Tetris trying to get this to fit in this car.

- We used to pay people to do these routes, but again, you know, as we couldn't afford staff, David and I just picked 'em up.

(gentle atmospheric music) We are hyper-local.

We report on anything happening in these three counties.

People care about, are their taxes going up?

Are their water bills going up?

Folks care very much about their children.

- [Mark] This is my 42nd year of high school football.

Local sports, we have a little bit of an advantage 'cause we put something out there that you can't get through SportsCenter or whatever.

And seeing people that I've covered for 40 years, they're still my closest friends.

- We're not hard to find.

Good morning.

They see us in church, at school, you know, they see us at the grocery store.

You like the paper, don't you?

- I do like the paper.

- That's what holds you accountable, right?

It's like, "Oh, I can't get this wrong 'cause I'm gonna see 'em next week at the Fourth of July."

- They kinda trust me to weed out what they say and what needs to be printed, what doesn't need to be printed.

(gentle atmospheric music) - We have about 200 people in Monterey.

Morning.

We know and love these folks, right?

We care about them.

Anybody I ever hire, I say, "Once you start working for us, you are a public figure."

(gentle atmospheric music) - I write about the Holcomb Hairy Man, Bigfoot.

It's a kind of a big hit among the outdoorsmen, the hunters, old men, young men approach me every time they see me and say, "I'm looking forward to the next episode."

- And I like the new family that you introduced this week.

- He's a time traveler.

(gentle atmospheric music) They never dreamed that a pastor would write something like this.

- [Anne] Yes.

- Maybe 100 years from now, people will think it's really true.

(laughs) - And that's gonna be your legacy.

(laughs) - Yeah, that's kinda bad.

(Anne laughing) That's kinda bad.

- This newspaper was established October 20th in 1877.

It's never missed an issue.

There's not a lot of sensational news, although there's never a dull moment.

Old typewriter of course.

You can guess what this did, rollin' the ink.

Ink roller.

This is the only newspaper I've ever worked at.

I know a lot of publishers of daily papers, but I've never worked at one.

What I hear on the ground from the folks who work for those papers are, their papers' ownership keeps changing.

They don't know if they're gonna have a job tomorrow.

There's so many layoffs in recent years.

The corporations who buy a chain, they reduce the staff to where there's one editor left in a newsroom.

Those guys I feel for.

I'll let Kirk explain to you what this building was.

When you pop in to a place where you don't know, it's not easy to get everything right.

It makes it much easier to do your job if you really know those connections.

(gentle atmospheric music) - I really believe that the news media should reflect the communities they serve.

It's important for reporters and editors and even owners to come from the communities.

So this is our television studio complete with a cyclorama green screen.

I started at a Black newspaper in Los Angeles.

Even though that's a big city, the Black community is not that large.

And so what you find is information like about people you know, the family reunions and the class reunions and the parties that are coming up, who died, who's getting married, all kinds of intimate things that affect your life personally.

If a reporter from, say, a Black community goes in and pitches an editor who doesn't understand that community, they'll probably say, you know, “This is not a story.

This is not something we wanna cover."

So the reporter is trying to talk about something important to them and their community, but the editor doesn't get it.

- I was trying, you know, "New York Times" and, you know, "Washington Post" and, you know, trying to write for them and, you know, I wouldn't get responses.

And it dawned on me, I'm like, "Every time I pitch 'Indian Country Today', they're saying yes."

What is news and what isn't really depends upon who wants to tell the story.

Who thinks what is important?

(gentle country music) Hey!

Hey, come on in here, come on here.

- Oh, great.

- Hey.

(gentle country music) - Historically, the Mohawk people have always been the news bringers.

I used to maybe ride a horse, you know, 1,000 years ago, but today, I have a Toyota.

(laughs) Let's get you a chair.

- [Chief Allston] It's okay, look.

- Let me look at 1,000 places at once.

Who I am as a journalist started one way and then it evolved into something different because I met so many different people.

No, I do not wanna switch to German.

That's what it just said to me.

(chuckles) I don't know what I touched.

Sprechen sie Deutsch?

- Okay.

(chuckles) Yes, you look gorgeous.

- Okay.

(Chief Allston laughing) - Made him blush.

- I'm like hot.

I wasn't raised on the reservation.

I wasn't raised immersed in my culture.

So I had an excuse to ask questions that I didn't know on behalf of teaching the public.

- I'll back up.

It's been since 2012.

- Okay.

- We became state recognized in 2010 and we opened this building in 2012.

- [Vincent] Community journalism is very similar to journalism within Indian country.

A lot of times, these are smaller publications, you know, there are smaller tribal newspapers, just the same way there are smaller community newspapers.

- [Chief Allston] I'd like to think that people are becoming more in touch with who they are.

I am a product of the '60s, so we could say it's the Age of Aquarius, but maybe it took coming into the 21st century to have things revealed.

- [Vincent] The joy I get is bringing something that was spoken in closets out to the world.

- This is a highway sign that was on 58 Highway that people would stop and read, okay.

- "Indians were living here as late as 1825."

(others laughing) - Amazing, (Vincent laughing) amazing.

- I think that we're still here, right?

- [Chief Allston] A little bit.

Right.

What this did to generations, reading that sign.

History has been distorted and misinterpreted and putting it on a plaque or putting it on paper, you keep saying it, saying it, saying it.

Next thing you know, oh, this is a real thing.

- [Carlos] Things are so easily garbled.

You worry that you're either missing news or are you getting it right?

Are you being as fair as you can?

You've been there.

- You've probably long heard that, you know, journalists should be objective.

So I don't believe that's possible, you know?

We all have a bias.

We're coming from somewhere, right?

But we can try to be fair.

You don't just listen to one person, you understand what that person's bias is.

Are we getting all the sides of the story?

Sometimes, there's two, sometimes, there's eight.

Fact checking is a thing.

We do it.

- [Julia] It's through the media's eyes that we find out what's happening in our legislature, in our public institutions.

- Anybody can walk through there and say, "What did you do here?

What did you write here?"

So you're on the front lines, you're not, you know, behind a couple of security guards on the fifth floor.

- [Matt] You're not gonna run a newspaper without making a few people mad.

Fortunately, we've never had anybody come in and be violent.

You know, it certainly has happened I mean you had the Annapolis "Capital"...

There've been places where the newspaper offices have been firebombed.

- I was doxxed on social media and I was getting phone calls night and day.

I got things like, "We will kill you."

And I was just like, "Ooh, this is not good."

(laughs) And that happened many times.

- It's something that does happen.

You do think about it.

- Yeah, I've had death threats in the past, you know, people really upset with something we've covered but.

Threaten to sue, but I'm still alive and I haven't been sued.

I dont really -- I'm not anxious about it because I know these folks.

If I've messed up or we've done something wrong, they just come to the house or they call me at home at night.

"I don't think you took the right turn there."

- And you wanna be fair.

And people think that newspapers or TV or - that there's an agenda behind what you do and what you write and what you choose.

- People don't trust the media anymore and this is a problem because who do they believe?

- [Paula] While I saw this, you know, community and that, you know, everyone is very welcoming and so kind to everybody.

When it came to politics and when it came to national issues and concerns, there was always this divide.

And that is just something that I can't really fathom.

- That one.

- Okay, what?

There's a- - Oh, that's - - [Julia] The public gets four kinds of information.

They get the news, they get editorialization and then they get disinformation and misinformation.

- People will get their news somehow, some way, whether if it's right or wrong or whether it's true or not.

- When there are diverging opinions about what a fact is, we're in trouble.

- We have these platforms that are incredibly diametrically opposed.

You know, you have CNN and Fox which definitely don't share the same opinion.

Where do you draw that line and what do you tell?

- If you have people that are sort of on the right perspective mad at you sometimes and you have people on the left perspective that are mad at you, you're probably where you ought to be.

- You don't have to have a degree or a license or a permit to do this job.

What you do need is a good education in the ethics behind it.

- Journalists have a role to tell the truth.

(chuckles) That's number one.

When you're analyzing a story, what are you thinking about?

Are you saying, "Now, is that a real city?

Is that a real person?"

- In touch with you?

I'm gonna be sending you an email.

- April, are you looking at this?

Or is... - [Matt] "Oh, there's a rumor that's such and such a plant's gonna come here."

Well, when we see the permits, we'll print it.

People will say, "Well, everybody knew it."

I'll say, "Well, they might have known it but they couldn't prove it."

When they could prove it, it was in the paper.

(gentle orchestral music) (printer clattering) (gentle orchestral music) The racket over there is our dot matrix printer printing about 4,000 labels.

(gentle orchestral music) It's a weekly paper, comes out every Wednesday.

We actually have a guy who sells out on the street corner on Wednesday mornings and he starts about five o'clock in the morning.

We're locally owned, it's owned by my family, has been for four generations.

I think the white-haired guy was probably based on my great-grandfather.

This is January through June of 1985.

We're kinda out here on the end of the vine.

We don't have an IT department, I'm the IT department, and if it goes down, I gotta fix it.

- And if you scroll down.

(gentle orchestral music) - This is the counter where people bring in press releases and obituaries and come in to pound on the desk of the editor when they're mad, which does happen from time to time.

It's still important to have an open door that people can come in.

It worries me greatly that there are newspapers that now no longer have physical presences in their communities.

And there are some, if they do, their doors are locked.

As far as I'm concerned, they might as well take their ball and go home.

- Oh, okay.

(gentle atmospheric music) - [Editor] Seven, B, B.

(mutters) (gentle atmospheric music) It's seven, seven, not eight.

(mutters) Even with six people, we can't be in all these -- This is a big county.

Three school board meetings, three government meetings, three planning commission meetings.

- All right.

She's changed that to seven.

- Okay.

- Except- - And we're not gonna.

(laughs) (colleague muttering indistinctly) We get a little punchy at this time of day.

(laughs) (gentle atmospheric music) - We're finally getting it to you.

Everything should be your way in about five minutes, okay?

(gentle atmospheric music) (gentle orchestral music) (door clattering) (ramp clacking) (gentle orchestral music) (ramp clattering) (gentle orchestral music) - I get this one.

(gentle orchestral music) ...and went home with two baby birds.

Kids do the darnedest things.

(gentle orchestral music) (wheels clattering) (gentle orchestral music) (basket clattering) (gentle orchestral music) - [Matt] You know, if we have bad weather in the wintertime, always kinda sweat Tuesday nights.

We haven't missed many.

We've been doing it this way for close on to 30 years and I can count on the fingers of two hands the times we've not made the mail.

The big challenge is how do we generate enough revenue to keep this newsroom going?

(gentle orchestral music) We serve two masters, locally-owned community papers.

We obviously have to make sure the paper remains profitable, but we also have that civic responsibility of covering our communities.

(gentle orchestral music) - [Anne] There's David's mom.

She walks every day.

Down to the store.

Thank you, dear.

(gentle orchestral music) (newspapers thudding) Good morning.

- How you doing?

- I'm good, how are you?

- All right.

What are y'all filmin?

- Oh yeah, they're filmin.

I would really like to keep this newspaper going because I think it's so critical to do.

How you doing, sugar?

- [Acquaintance] Fine, how are you?

- I'm good.

Nobody's ever gonna make a lot of money running a newspaper or working for a newspaper, but I would like for it not to be quite as hard.

(gentle atmospheric music) Come on dude.

Mike McCray, blocking the way.

You know, at one point years ago, this community had probably 6,000 people in the county.

(gentle atmospheric music) It started to steadily decline.

(gentle atmospheric music) Kids grow up, they can't find work here, they end up having to leave, go somewhere else.

(gentle atmospheric music) We have more deaths than we have births.

That's the way it's going.

(gentle atmospheric music) Back when we had a big staff, you know, these were all full.

(gentle atmospheric music) So this is a cleaning-in-process.

But this used to be my office, I had a desk in here.

There are my little children.

(chuckles) We shut the press room down in 2000.

This is where we used to keep the newsprint and there's some still here.

Reduced staff then.

When the recession hit, some folks just left sort of, as they went we didn't replace them.

(gentle atmospheric music) Here's your ampersand.

(gentle atmospheric music) Imagine putting every letter.

(gentle atmospheric music) Newspaper rack.

We stopped using these when we went to a dollar.

We're $5 off the news rack now, that's expensive.

Nobody carries around $5 in quarters.

I like the fact that we've been here so long, we're really considered less of a for-profit business trying to hang on, people treat us as theirs like almost as if it's, like we're the public library, and I like that very much.

But it also makes it harder to sell, later.

It's like, "Okay, you know, can't you just give us a subscription?

Why do you have to charge so much?"

Well, you know, we do have bills to pay.

Always in this industry, it's been the three Ps, you know, payroll, postal and printing.

(pages rustling) - [Carlos] Classified ads used to be, I think, 60, 70% of revenue.

I was a reporter, I didn't care about what went around the stories.

Now, it's pretty much everything.

- [Anne] Do we have enough advertising to add eight pages this week or no?

And if not, that means tougher decisions about what we can publish and what we can't.

Look at these margins.

The weekly is a good pace.

There are times when I wish I had at least one more issue in a week, but I don't know how I would make that happen.

So this feels like a good pace and it fits with what we call, you know, Allegheny Mountain Time, right?

Little slower.

Keep us all sane.

(bright acoustic music) - And she had like this cloak on.

And I thought it was a bear standing up.

It turned out to be an Amish woman standing there.

- To go down to the local place and sit with your friends and reminisce about, you know, a game they played in and something I wrote about.

It's something a small town does that you can't get in a big city.

(gentle folk music) - We just had an increase of 72 students, this new academic year.

That's the exciting part too is that we are able to train them in reporting real news that's fact-based and fact-checked.

I see them struggling on one side, but I see them succeeding on the other side.

(gentle orchestral music) - I knew that the job hunting journey was gonna be hard, but I was so determined to become a reporter.

I mean that was just my dream job.

(gentle orchestral music) - There's nothing I do as a Native American journalist that doesn't touch something about tradition, culture, history, et cetera.

I do have things that I like to tell in my way and other people have theirs to tell in their way.

And that's great and that's the nature of news.

- [Carlos] We talk about how "well, we're living in these times.

These times are the worst ever."

Well, I think that that's not true.

I think every generation has its polarizing issues but it's a very tiny number of people who are actually tearing at the fabric of society.

I think most people want to get along with other people.

There's that will, there's that power.

There's always people that try to bring you together.

(upbeat folk music) - [Matt] I'm somewhat optimistic about what local journalism can mean to those things that are driving us apart.

Anything that helps people see each other as people.

(upbeat music) - [Carlos] Every human being suffers the same pain and the same joy that you do, and it's real and it's true.

And every day, you have to remind yourself of that and that, that's the only thing that matters actually.

(gentle atmospheric music) - We're the headwaters for the Potomac and the James.

So everything we do to the rivers up here, you know, affects all the way to Richmond, you know?

(gentle atmospheric music) A lot of different things hold a society together.

But having a common place for information I think is a huge piece of that.

(gentle atmospheric music) Do I think someday we probably won't be printing?

Maybe.

Not on my watch though, you know?

I think we have, you know, some solid years ahead yet if we can just hang on.

(gentle atmospheric music) - [Presenter] Production funding for “Life In The Heart Land” was provided by.... (gentle country music) ♪ Who belongs (gentle country music) ♪ Is there room enough for all?

Who belongs?

♪ (gentle country music) ♪ Do we stand or do we fall ♪ And is there room (gentle country music) ♪ In our hearts for this whole land ♪ ♪ Is there room (gentle country music) ♪ For us in the heart ♪ Of the land (gentle country music) (chime)