Prepared remarks of Albert P. Smith Jr. at inaugural Al Smith Award Dinner, Lexington, Ky., June 2,
2011
When my sister Robin Smith picked out a husband, he was James Burrow, a college professor
from Bandana, a western Kentucky community so small I had never heard of it. Years later, Happy
Chandler assured me it existed. “I refereed a ball game there, Albert.”
James Burrow, a historian of economics, wrote two impressive national books on medicine and
health care. He scorned other historians who focused on the civil war — “We don’t need any more,” he
said. And he laughed at my tales about Logan County’s political bosses, Doc Beauchamp and Tom Rhea,
who were foes of Happy Chandler. James dismissed self-published stories about who did what in
Kentucky’s rural counties as sentimental claptrap.
But when he was dying, I was touched to find this brilliant scholar sitting in a wheel chair out in
Abilene, Texas, and looking, every day, at the pictures in high school yearbooks from Bandana in
Carlisle County, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River. He faced his end with the memory of his own local
history and the events of his youth.
I respect rural journalism for its traditional reports on the vitality of rural life — the honor
roll, the 4-H champ, the star guard, the purchase of a fire truck, the largest deer killed, the two-headed
calf, and the obituaries, births and weddings, and vacation Bible schools. These are the footnotes for
the history of every community in rural Kentucky. If there is not a weekly paper or a sundowner radio
station or cable system for these chronicles, our past goes from dim to dark, our children lose the light
of wisdom, of knowing the past to guide them when they shape the future.
Local journalism is also the canary in the mineshaft, the signal that things are wrong at the
roots of our society, that air has gone stale and democracy is smothered.
The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues was founded at UK seven years ago to
support the values of a lively, informed and independent press. We turned on as the big city papers
were turning off – closing their rural bureaus, firing reporters, and killing their state pages, all while
claiming nothing was lost. Yeah, yeah, nothing lost but the news, the signals between city and
countryside. If the canary dies, who would know it? Sixty million rural Americans, only 2 percent of
whom are farmers, are really too important to be blacked out by modern media from the real world of
the 21st Century.
But the Wal-Marting of Main Street America has also corporatized our media. Consumers may
get more for less cost of what is cheap and easy to produce, but the content – so cleverly made with
high tech--is stripped of human touch, the stories and editorials that require a nosy reporter or a
cranky editor to spend costly hours digging at the news and scolding the leaders who lie about it, not
just at the Congress or the state Capitol, but in the counting houses, the banks, and business, and, yes,
at the school board, the mayor’s office, and the Courthouse.
Recognizing this, the Institute’s goal is to transfer the facts on policy issues from campus to the
communities to help rural journalists set the agenda for public discussion. (Video ends at this point)
Can a full life be found on a small paper or broadcast station? My friend Don Neagle, veteran
news director of WRUS-AM in Russellville did. Fifty years ago, Logan County was well served because
Don and I, who were supposed to be rivals, split the news beats and shared our notes. Still reporting,
and now an owner, he is probably the most trusted citizen in the county.
Although I made somebody mad every week, our circulation grew when we took a stand on a
controversial issue, like school consolidation or a tax for a new library, or spoke our piece on politics. In
Russellville, local folks sobered me up, then invested in my newspaper company. A young social worker
came to town one day to thank me for hiring a lad she had helped at Western State. At lunch, we
talked about his case 10 minutes and about ours for two hours. We married a year later, after she told
me our life could achieve all its potential if we didn’t let the city limits sign obscure our vision.
So, Martha Helen and I raised a family together and did all the things you’ve heard about
tonight. Others, like Samantha Swindler, the Corbin editor, in her 20s, who recently won the Institute’s
Gish Award for courage exposing a corrupt sheriff, prove the point: There are lots of worlds to conquer
in rural America for brave young editors.
I thank the Society of Professional Journalists for conceiving the Smith award. SPJ stands for
journalism ethics, freedom of information, and tries to improve and protect journalism. It has much in
common with the Institute, supporting open government laws and responsible media ownership.
SPJ’s foundation gave us money 10 years ago to research the case for creating the Institute. SPJ
was with me 45 years ago, supporting our Russellville paper’s attack on student censorship at Western
University where, when things changed, an excellent communications program graduated Al Cross for
a brilliant future in journalism. I am a Fellow of SPJ, given this honor in my retirement in the company
of the late Tim Russert and Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
We three were “engaged” journalists, acting out in the narratives we reported. This model is
opposed by reasonable critics. The reporter is not part of the story, they say. OK, but it worked for me
as I campaigned for taxes and better schools, libraries, hospitals, airports, parks, arts programs and
new industries, all goals of Russellville and London leaders, some of whom are here tonight. While I
had a point of view, I am proud that my papers and broadcasts were always open to those who
differed.
My role models were drawn from a book, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, a crusading
editor, and, up close, Nat Caldwell, a Pulitzer Prize winner on The Tennessean, the Nashville reporter
who taught me how to make things happen.
The Institute now has 20 academic partners in 18 states. Under the leadership of Dean Dan
O’Hair and Journalism School Director Beth Barnes, Al Cross has extended our reach from Appalachia
to India and Africa. Our dream, eventually, is to become a source for rural people everywhere in the
world, giving UK an international reputation for good work at a cost not much more than a few race
horses or a trainload of coal.
I thank you all for helping make this happen.
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