The Associated Press this week published a poignant story about how residents of a coal county in West Virginia are coping after the closing of their last remaining news outlet — The Welch News. AP reporter Leah Willingham spoke with Missy Nester, the newspaper’s owner and publisher, and other people in the community who voiced what this loss means.
“In March, the McDowell County weekly became another one of the thousands of U.S. newspapers that have shuttered since 2005, a crisis Nester called ‘terrifying for democracy’ and one that disproportionately impacts rural Americans like her,” Willingham wrote. “Residents suddenly have no way of knowing what’s going on at public meetings, which are not televised, nor are minutes or recordings posted online. Even basic tasks, like finding out about church happenings, have become challenging. The paper printed pages of religious events and directories every week and that hasn’t been replaced.”
Nester tried to save The Welch News in 2018 by taking out a loan and scraping together all the money she could, Willingham reported. “I bought this place knowing I’ll probably never make any money. It’s not about that,” Nester told the AP in a video accompanying the article. “It’s about my community that I love. It’s about the people here that I love.”
By the time it closed, The Welch News had enjoyed a nearly 100-year run.
In an official announcement on The Welch News’ website, editor Derek Tyson wrote that the newspaper maintained a three-times a week printing schedule “through two 100-year floods and an ever-growing economic depression into a global pandemic” before slowing to printing once a week last year.
“Like a dandelion sprouting from cracked asphalt, it takes grit, resilience, stubbornness, and most importantly: sacrifice,” Tyson wrote. “As a little team with a big heart, we sacrificed many dreams, opportunities, and precious time with loved ones over the years. But sacrifice on that level is never sustainable long-term.”
By Amaris Castillo
In Mississippi, a nonprofit newsroom fresh off a Pulitzer win elects to unionize
Journalists at Deep South Today, which owns New Orleans-based newsroom Verite and the Pulitzer Prize-winning outlet Mississippi Today, announced Thursday that they had unionized with the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians.
Deep South Today, a nonprofit that aims to create a network of local newsrooms in the South, was first started as Mississippi News and Information Corporation in 2014. Its first two newsrooms, Mississippi Today and Verite, launched in 2016 and 2022, respectively, and the company aims to expand into Tennessee, Arkansas and Alabama.
Mississippi Today won its first Pulitzer Prize this year for an investigative series into a $77 million welfare scandal.
“We believe in this organization’s mission to build innovative newsrooms in the Deep South, and we’re essential to fulfilling it,” the union wrote in their mission statement. “That’s why we’re unionizing — to invest in Mississippi Today and Verite’s success, and the success of our future sister newsrooms.”
The company has already voluntarily recognized the union. The 25 editorial and audience engagement staff at Deep South Today will be represented by the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians’s Local 31, which includes units at several broadcast stations across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
The news industry is in the middle of an organizing movement. More than 100 newsrooms have unionized or announced union campaigns since the start of the pandemic. Just last month, workers at nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, the largest investigative outlet in the country, went public with their own campaign.
The movement has reached parts of the country with low rates of union membership. Deep South Today is the first news organization based in Mississippi to unionize. A few states over, employees at the Savannah Morning News and Athens Banner-Herald are awaiting their union election. If successful, they will be the first two newspapers in Georgia to unionize with the NewsGuild, which represents more than 250 newsrooms.
By Angela Fu
ATTENZIONE, NEW YORK TIMES!
If you’ve been down any vertical video rabbit holes in recent weeks, you may have seen videos from a woman in Venice loudly exposing pickpockets preying on tourists with her instantly iconic Italian battle cry: “ATTENZIONE, PICKPOCKET!”
Monica Poli, 57, quickly went viral, was turned into a club dance remix and now appears in The New York Times for a Q&A with Styles reporter Madison Malone Kircher. God bless Kircher for doing the investigative work to bring this hero to light and answer the question that has been on hundreds of thousands of people’s minds: What is this lady’s deal?
TikTok’s algorithmic might is talented at lifting everyday people into global attention magnets, and news outlets have struggled in the past with how to reckon with viral moments: how big to play them up, whether to address them at all, if something’s really “viral” enough to matter, the list goes on.
This was a well-timed interview with the delightful Poli, and a perfect example of how traditional news outlets are finally getting how to report on internet culture in a way that isn’t cringe. Bravissimo.
By Annie Aguiar
Media tidbits and links for your weekend review
- In a tweet, “60 Minutes” writes, “We at 60 Minutes are mourning the loss of our longtime producer, Katie Spikes, and extend our deepest sympathies to her family. Katie exemplified the best of 60 Minutes, in her work at CBS News for three decades, and as our beloved colleague and friend.”
- Jim Rich has been named editor-in-chief of Deadspin … again. Rich previously ran Deadspin and was promoted to editorial director of all G/O Media sites until his sudden resignation in 2021. In 2016, as editor-in-chief of the Daily News, Rich oversaw a yearlong investigation that earned a Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism along with ProPublica.
- In the climate crisis-focused newsletter Heated, Iowa meteorologist Chris Gloninger talks about quitting his job at a Des Moines CBS affiliate over “vicious” messages and death threats sent by viewers angry at him incorporating climate science into his weather report — and the positivity he received from supportive viewers after leaving.
- Earlier this month, the head football coach at Northwestern University was suspended and then fired after a bombshell report from Northwestern’s student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern. Now, the interim coach is fielding a flurry of questions from the media and Northwestern community. For The Athletic, it’s Kalyn Kahler and Nicole Auerbach with “David Braun takes Northwestern’s questions, tries to set course forward at Big Ten media days.”
- Variety’s Brian Steinberg with “ESPN Tests All-Female ‘SportsCenter’ in Bid to Spotlight Women’s Sports for Bigger Crowd.”
- The Los Angeles Times’ Hayley Smith with “I searched hell on Earth for a story. What I found will haunt me forever.”
- Cool story and design from The Washington Post’s Lizzie Johnson and Lauren Tierney: “Why the famed Appalachian Trail keeps getting longer — and harder.”
- Remember Jonathan Ware? He’s the kid with the zombie face paint who went viral when he responded to a broadcast reporter with a confident “I like turtles.” Ware is back, 16 years later, for an ad for the upcoming “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” movie that’s disguised as a news report.
More resources for journalists
- Bring Poynter to Your Newsroom, Classroom or Workplace.
- Power of Diverse Voices: Writing Workshop for Journalists of Color (Nov. 15-18) (Seminar) — Apply by Sept. 15.
- Covering Climate Change Science and Policy in a Polarized World (Seminar, Washington D.C.) — Apply Aug. 14.
- Strength in Numbers: How to Use CDC Data to Upgrade Your Mental Health Reporting (Aug. 30) (Webinar) — Enroll Now.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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