Community journalists assert the importance of investigative reporting at small newspapers

Despite the challenges facing small newspapers—lack of time, staff, resources, techniques, training and outside pressures—investigative reporting is still an important and valuable service to provide readers, said Tommy Thomason, director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism at Texas Christian University and a panel he assembled at the National Newspaper Association's convention last weekend.

Panelist Mark Horvit, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, said that since large news outlets have largely pulled out of rural America, "If you don't do it, nobody's going to." Thomason called Horvit's statement "maybe the most important thing I've heard this morning," reports Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes the Rural Blog.

Marshall Helmberger, left, publisher of the Timberjay in northern Minnesota, "said his paper also has the largest circulation of any weekly in its region, partly because of its investigative work," Cross writes. Helmberger said, "People in our region have learned that having a newspaper that takes its watchdog role seriously, though it can be an irritant at times, is a community asset. . . . You've got problems that could use some attention from your paper. . . . All it takes is one enterprising person to ask the right questions."

Samantha Swindler, "whose investigation of a Kentucky sheriff when she was editor of The Times Tribune in Corbin, Ky., led to a 15-year prison term for the Whitley County sheriff," said, "You should never print something that you wouldn't say to somebody's face." Cross writes, "She offered another principle to follow: Don't be so focused on turning over rocks that you forget the more traditional civic functions of a community newspaper: 'When you print the good stuff, people will listen to you when you say something is wrong.'"

Jonathan Austin and Samantha Swindler (Al Cross photo)

Swindler, now editor of the Forest Grove Leader in Oregon, was the 2010 winner of the Institute's Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism. One of the 2012 winners, Jonathan Austin of the now-defunct Yancey County News in North Carolina, was also on the panel, as was Kathy Cruz of the Hood County News in Texas, co-author with Thomason of the new book on small-town investigative journalism. You Might Want to Carry A Gun. For a full report on the panel discussion, click here.