Weekly editors' group explores Kentucky's Bluegrass and Appalachian coalfield

The annual conference of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors spent the day in Kentucky's Appalachian coalfield today, after starting the annual event yesterday in the Bluegrass Region at a distillery, the state capital of Frankfort and the horse farm of former Gov. Brereton Jones. The first stop today was International Coal Group's Rowdy Mine, a 3,000-acre mountaintop-removal job north of Hazard, where a 150-ton rock truck dwarfed Bruce Chomma of the Zambian Institute of Mass Communication. ICG and Kentucky Coal Association officials answered many questions about mountaintop removal and the coal industry.

The group went to Whitesburg to visit The Mountain Eagle, a nationally honored weekly, and then to Appalshop, the 41-year-old media-and-arts cooperative, where filmmaker Elizabeth Barret discussed "Stranger With a Camera," her popular documentary centered on a local man's killing 43 years ago of Hugh O'Connor, a Canadian who was filming renters in the man's substandard housing. The film explores media representations of Appalachia and local reactions to national media; Barret discussed with the editors the reactions of local people to her film, released in 2000.

The conference continues today with a day of programming from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues on "Weeklies and the Web." Tomorrow are the editorial critiques, the longest-running feature of ISWNE conferences, and the awards banquet. The conference is headquartered at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond. For a story by Ivy Brashear of the Hazard Herald on the Eastern Kentucky trip, click here.