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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Struggling rural newspaper breaks a national story

The Tracy Press in California has been struggling for survival. Back in February 2008, we reported that the family-owned newspaper had cut back circulation from daily to just Wednesdays and Saturdays. Now the paper has broken a local story that went national.

After 8-year-old Sandra Cantu disappeared March 27, all the paper's drastically reduced staff started working on the story. After Cantu's body was discovered stuffed in a suitcase, reporter Jennifer Wadsworth, 22, started following rumors which led her to Cantu's 28-year-old neighbor, Melissa Huckaby, who had become a suspect in the case. Huckaby first refused to speak to Wadsworth when she contacted woman through the cell phone number listed in court records, the reporter told Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times, but then "She said, well, you're from the home paper."

Huckaby proceeded to reveal that she owned the suitcase in which Cantu's body was found. Although she claimed it had been stolen the day before Cantu's disappearance, she had not told police that. After reading Wadsworth's report on the paper's Web site, the cops brought Huckaby in again. Following a five-hour interview, she was charged with kidnapping and killing Cantu. With that, the paper itself became front-page news. "Wadsworth said she is struggling to get enough reporting time in between all the TV interviews," writes Cantu. (Read more)

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