'The country has come apart. Rural America has a cure,' good papers that create a sense of community, writer says

Google map, adapted by The Rural Blog

Columnist Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, who recently bought a home in Rappahannock County, Virginia, has discovered the weekly Rappahannock News, one of America's best small newspapers, and he sees it as a cure for what ails the nation:

"At a time when hooligans have hijacked the national discourse with disinformation and paranoia, the Rappahannock News operates in a calmer place where the slow rhythms of rural life are newsworthy — and where, regardless of political views, its readers are unified by a powerful sense of community. In tiny Rappahannock County, the newspaper still serves as the hymnal of our civic religion. It’s a tradition that we need to rescue in rural America — and emulate in our cities."

The Rapp News is known for the support it gets from a local foundation, Foothills Forum, and recently got an editor through Report for America. Withhout those two things, it would probably have a staff of one instead of four to serve the county of about 7,350, Publisher Dennis Brack told Milbank, who explains all that, but also gives several examples of how it punches above its weight:

A volunteer fire department "responded so infrequently and so poorly to emergency calls that the state yanked the rescue squad’s certification. Yet the nonresponsive first responders (they apparently handled no calls for about 10 months) continued to draw $25,000 quarterly from the county — resulting in a months-long legal fight that the Rapp News chronicled in delicious detail. . . . The paper is the only outlet demanding accountability for the just-launched broadband expansion . . . Coverage of meddling by a local bigwig prompted officials to rescind a plan to move the local post office . . . Its reporting on a foiled shooting plot at the local high school led authorities to abandon attempts to keep the matter hushed up. When a winter snowstorm knocked out power in parts of the county, some readers called the newspaper rather than the power company to ask when the lights would come back on. In an age of lost confidence in news media (as in almost all institutions), readers still trust this community paper."

Milbank starts his piece with selections from the paper's personal items, such as "Chuck and Diane Moore just celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary. Mae Racer makes the best rice pudding," and reports, "I freely admit that I don’t know any of these people. Yet, I am enthralled. . . . At a time when we’re perpetually fighting about weighty matters in our national life, it’s soothing to know there’s still a place where we can all come together, bound by our common affection for things close to home."