National Summit
on Journalism
in Rural America
Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill and Lexington, Ky.
April 19-21, 2007
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
A multi-institutional, multidisciplinary center with partners at 16 universities in 12 states,
based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky
The Summit is made possible by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,
with additional support from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and Farm Foundation
National Summit on Journalism in Rural America
Events at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, 3501 Lexington Road, Harrodsburg, Ky., unless noted
Thursday, April 19
7-9 p.m. Opening reception, West Family Dwelling
Friday, April 20 at West Family Wash House unless noted
8 a.m. Continental breakfast
9:00 Welcome from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
Al Cross, Director
Rudy Abramson, chair, national Advisory Board
Al Smith, chair, Steering Committee
9:15 Research presentations
A survey of training backgrounds and needs at rural newspapers
Al Cross and graduate assistant Vaughan Fielder, University of Kentucky
Economic and other threats to rural newspapers
Liz Hansen and Deborah Givens, Eastern Kentucky University
9:45 Issues facing Rural America: Policy and politics; moderated by Bill Bishop
Brian Dabson, Rural Policy Research Institute, University of Missouri
Brian Mann, North Country Radio, Saranac Lake, N.Y., author of Welcome to the Homeland
11:30 Lunch, Trustees’ Office
1 p.m. How three newspaper chains meet the bottom line and provide good journalism on rural issues
Frank Denton, vice president for news, Morris Communications
Bill Ketter, vice president for news, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.
Benjy Hamm, executive editor, Landmark Community Newspapers Inc.
2:15 An independent editor-publisher who sold to, and works for, a new kind of chain
Jenay Tate, The Coalfield Progress, Norton, Va., and American Hometown Publishing
2:45 Break
3:00 Independent editors and publishers on covering rural issues and staying independent
Joe Rutherford, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
John Q. Murray, Clark Fork Chronicle, Montana
Laurie Ezzell Brown, The Canadian Record, Texas
4:15 Adjourn
5:30 BUSES LEAVE for Lexington
(automobile traffic follows US 68 from Shaker Village to Lexington)
6:00 Reception, Crowne Plaza Lexington - The Campbell House, 1375 Harrodsburg Rd.
7:00 Tom and Pat Gish Award Dinner, Main Ballroom, Campbell House
Tribute to Tom and Pat Gish by Rudy Abramson
Recognition of finalists for Tom and Pat Gish Award
Presentation of Gish Award to the Ezzell Family of The Canadian (Tex.) Record
Address by John Seigenthaler, founder, Freedom Forum First Amendment Center
9:30 Board buses for return to Shaker Village
Saturday, April 21
West Family Wash House
8 a.m. Continental breakfast
9:00 Academic centers for rural and community journalism
Peggy Kuhr, Knight Chair on Press, Leadership and Community, University of Kansas
Chris Waddle, Knight Community Journalism Fellows Program, University of Alabama
Al Cross, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky
Eileen Gilligan, Center for Community Journalism, State University of N.Y. at Oswego
9:45 How rural newspapers can adopt the digital culture and drive reader interaction
Discussion led by Ray Laakaniemi, Tiffin University professor and former weekly editor
10:30 Group strategy session on the future of rural journalism
PRESENTERS AND DICUSSION LEADERS
Rudy Abramson of Reston, Va., was a co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism
and Community Issues and is chair of its national Advisory Board. He was a
Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times for more than 25 years. Prior to
joining the Times, he was a reporter, science editor, and Washington correspondent for
The (Nashville) Tennessean. A native of Florence, Ala., he began his newspaper career
as a teen-aged community correspondent for the weekly Florence Herald. He is the
author of Spanning the Century: the Life of W. Averell Harriman, Hallowed Ground:
Preserving America’s Heritage, and co-editor of the recently published Encyclopedia of
Appalachia.
Bill Bishop, a writer living in Austin, is the former co-owner of The Bastrop County
Times, a weekly newspaper in Smithville, Tex. Down payment for the weekly came from
the sale of a strip-mining legal newsletter Bishop and his wife founded. He is the author
of The Big Sort: The Self-Segregation of America and What It Means For Our Politics,
Economy and Culture, which will be published next year by the Houghton Mifflin Co. He
has worked at The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky.; the Lexington Herald-Leader and
the Austin American-Statesman. He was a writer-in-residence at MDC Inc., a ruraldevelopment think tank in Chapel Hill, N.C., and taught a course on rural development at
the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. He is co-editor of The Daily Yonder, a webbased newspaper covering rural America founded by the Center for Rural Strategies with the assistance
of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. DailyYonder.com will go live in June.
Al Cross is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based
at the University of Kentucky. He joined UK in August 2004 after more than 26 years
as a reporter at The Courier-Journal, more than 15 as the Louisville newspaper’s chief
political writer. He continues to write a twice-monthly column for the newspaper. He
was president of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2001-02 and remains a
member of the SPJ Ethics Committee. His awards include a share of the Pulitzer Prize
won by The Courier-Journal staff for coverage of the nation’s deadliest drunk-driving
crash. He is the longest-running panelist on Kentucky Educational Television's
“Comment on Kentucky.” He edited weeklies in Leitchfield, Russellville and Monticello,
Ky., and is a graduate of Western Kentucky University. He is professional freedom and responsibility
chair for the Community Journalism Interest Group of the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication and secretary of the Kentucky Judicial Campaign Conduct Committee.
Brian Dabson is the Rural Policy Research Institute’s executive vice president and codirector of its Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, and research professor at the Harry S.
Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He has more
than 30 years of experience in public, private, and nonprofit sectors on both sides of the
Atlantic dedicated to expanding economic opportunity for low-income people and
distressed communities. Recognized nationally and internationally for his work on
entrepreneurship development, particularly in a rural context, he has given many
keynote presentations and consultations across the United States, Europe, and India.
He is also a frequent speaker and writer on rural policy and the implications of global
forces on rural America. Dabson was president of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, now
known simply as CFED, in 1992-2004. During that time, he served two terms as president of the
international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Forum on Social Innovations.
Before joining CFED, he was for nine years the managing director of a European consulting and research
organization specializing in economic development, training, and employment issues. He worked for 13
years in municipal governments in Liverpool and Glasgow.
Frank Denton is vice president for journalism of Morris Communications, which owns
28 newspapers in 11 states, from Florida to Alaska. He has been a journalist for more
than 40 years – first as a reporter in Austin, Alabama and Cincinnati, then as an editor
in various capacities at the Detroit Free Press for 10 years. He was editor of the
Wisconsin State Journal in Madison for almost 18 years, then editor of The Tampa
Tribune for one before joining Morris in 2005. He holds a BA from the University of
Texas at Austin, an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,
and MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He
conceived, researched, edited and co-authored The Local News Handbook, The Local News Toolkit and
The Learning Newsroom, all for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Deborah Taylor Givens joined the Eastern Kentucky University journalism faculty in
2006 after a 20-year career as a weekly newspaper editor and publisher. She has a
bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ball State University and a master’s degree in
public administration from Western Kentucky University. Her journalism career began
in 1974 as an editor with Al Smith Communications, Inc., a newspaper group in
Southern Kentucky. In 1982, Deborah and her husband Roger founded The Butler
County Banner and later purchased a second newspaper, The Green River Republican,
which she had edited when it was part of the Smith company. After 16 years of
publishing, the couple sold the newspaper company to explore other opportunities.
Deborah joined the staff of the Kentucky Court of Appeals while also teaching as an adjunct professor of
journalism at Western Kentucky University. In 2003, she was admitted to the doctoral program at the
University of Kentucky and successfully completed the qualifying exam in 2006.
Benjy Hamm has been editorial director of Landmark Community Newspapers Inc.
since November 2003. He assists LCNI papers in recruiting and training, and provides
critiques, advice and counsel on editorial and legal matters and freedom-of-information
issues. Before returning to Landmark, he was managing editor of the 55,000-circulation
Herald-Journal in Spartanburg, S.C. During that time, the 62-person news staff won
more than 150 South Carolina Press Association awards, including the top two honors,
for freedom of information in 1999 and 2003, and for community service in 2000. He
was city editor at Spartanburg from 1995-98. He was editor of The Lancaster (S.C.)
News, an LCNI tri-weekly, in 1991-95. Under his leadership, the paper won more than
100 SCPA awards, including general excellence, public service, features and spot news. He was an
Associated Press reporter and editor from 1989 to 1991, and a reporter for The Post in his hometown of
Salisbury, N.C., in 1986-87. He has a master’s degree in mass communications from the University of
South Carolina, and a bachelor’s degree from Catawba College.
Elizabeth Hansen is a professor in the Department of Communication at Eastern
Kentucky University where she has taught journalism since 1987. Since 1991, each of
her Community Journalism classes has conducted a research and evaluation project for
a community newspaper. Hansen has served on the steering committee for the
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues since its founding. She is
teaching chair of the Community Journalism Interest Group of the Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her research interests include
community journalism, media ethics and media law. She is a member of the Ethics
Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists and a leader in its Bluegrass Pro
Chapter. Hansen worked as a reporter for The Springdale (Ark.) News, the Arkansas Democrat and the
State-Times in Baton Rouge, La. She has taught at Iowa State University, the University of Southern
Mississippi and the University of Kentucky. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of
Arkansas, a master’s degree from Iowa State and a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky.
Bill Ketter is vice president/news for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. and senior
vice president of Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co. of North Andover, Mass. He was vice
president and editor-in-chief of Eagle-Tribune papers from 2002 to 2006. The EagleTribune won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage, was recognized by the
Society of Professional Journalists as the best mid-sized newspaper in the nation in
2004, and won that organization’s national Public Service medal in 2005 for exposing
auto-insurance fraud in Massachusetts. The paper won many other awards while he was
editor. Ketter started out as a reporter for the Grand Forks Herald while working his
way through college. He is an English and English Literature graduate of the University
of North Dakota and graduate business studies at Boston University. He worked for United Press
International for 16 years in various editorial and executive positions, and as a vice president he traveled
worldwide, arranging coverage and negotiating with news agencies and governments. From 1978 to 1998
he was editor and senior vice president of The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., which won many
international, national, regional and state journalism awards during his tenure as editor, including being
named one of the nation's best non-metro dailies by Time magazine in 1982. At Boston University, he
was journalism department chair from 1999 through 2001 and professor and director of special programs
for the communications college from September 2001 through April 2003. From January to September
2002 he was vice president of community affairs and assistant to the publisher of the Boston Globe. He
was president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1995-96, receiving an ASNE
distinguished service award for extraordinary work on First Amendment issues; a Pulitzer Prize board
member from 1995 to 2002; first chairman of the World Editors Forum held in 1994 by the World
Association of Newspapers; co-chairman and founding media member of the Massachusetts JudiciaryMedia Committee; and chairman of the New England Academy of Journalists, which gives the Yankee
Quill award for betterment of journalism in New England. Ketter received the award in 1987. In SPJ, he
has been president of the New England Chapter and a national director, and is a director of SPJ’s Sigma
Delta Chi Foundation.
Peggy Kuhr is Knight Chair on the Press, Leadership and Community at the
University of Kansas. She joined KU in August 2002 after serving as managing
editor for content at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. She is on the
Academic Advisory Board for the Dole Institute of Politics at KU and serves on the
New Voices Advisory Board, for J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. She
has been a director of Associated Press Managing Editors and chaired a university
teaching initiative for APME’s National Credibility Roundtables Project. She is head
of the Community Journalism Interest Group of the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communications. She was a Michigan Journalism Fellow, and has worked for The
Hartford Courant and the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune. While an editor at The Spokesman-Review, she
taught classes at Gonzaga University and Eastern Washington University, and was a regular guest on a
local television news talk show that debuted convergence work between the newspaper and KHQ-TV.
Ray Laakaniemi has edited a weekly newspaper, researched winning weeklies,
consulted for several weeklies, and written The Weekly Writer's Handbook. He has
also worked on dailies, in college public relations, and taught journalism for 30 years.
One of his experiences was working with Michigan's Lapeer County Press, America's
largest rural weekly, when it ran 60 pages and sold 22,000 copies from a town of
8,000. Now semi-retired and a visiting professor at Tiffin University in northern Ohio,
he is focusing on what weekly and small daily newspapers need to do to survive in the
era of electronic explosion. His presentation will include key elements of successful
small papers, putting sacred cows out to pasture, redefining news, and planning that
makes a difference. He will also discuss newsroom attitudes, the power of anticipation, talking back to
defend citizens, and how rural media can make a difference in local democracy.
John Q. Murray is publisher of the Clark Fork Chronicle in western Montana and
founder and executive director of the Corporation for Public Community
Newspapers. CPCN is a non-profit, member-based organization that conducts
performance reviews, underwrites free publicity and distribution for community
groups, and funds special reporting, agenda-setting, deliberative and other projects. In
its first special project, Murray is developing Internet-based wizards that help citizen
journalists write stories using the conventional lede and inverted-pyramid structure.
He began his newspaper career in Wrangell, Alaska, where his cousin owned the
Wrangell Sentinel, and worked his way through college writing for the ChronicleProgress in Millard County, Utah, covering impacts of a major coal-fired power plant on a small
Mormon farming town. He is author of seven books about Microsoft software. After leaving Microsoft,
he developed software to help small newspapers. When his local paper moved out of the county
following an economic downturn, he founded the Clark Fork Chronicle. In its first three years, the
Chronicle won “more awards than any other new paper in memory,” according to the Montana
Newspaper Association, including a first place for Community Service.
John Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center in 1991 to create discussion
about First Amendment rights and values. A former president of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, he was an award-winning journalist for The
Tennessean for 43 years. At his retirement he was editor, publisher and CEO, and
remains chairman emeritus. From 1982 to 1992, he was also founding editorial
director of USA Today. As an assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the
early 1960s, he was chief negotiator with the governor of Alabama during the
Freedom Rides, and was attacked by Klansmen while attempting to aid riders. He is a
senior advisory trustee of the Freedom Forum, chairs the annual Profile in Courage
Award selection committee of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and cochaired with the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for the RFK Memorial.
He served on the National Commission on Federal Election Reform organized by former Presidents
Carter and Ford and is a member of the Constitution Project on Liberty and Security. In 2002, Vanderbilt
University created the John Seigenthaler Center, naming the Nashville building that houses offices of the
Freedom Forum, the First Amendment Center and the Diversity Institute. Scholarships in his name are
endowed at Vanderbilt and at Middle Tennessee State University, where the Seigenthaler Chair in First
Amendment Studies was endowed for $1.5 million. He hosts a weekly book-review program, “A Word
On Words,” and is the author of a biography, James K. Polk.
Al Smith is a co-founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
and chair of its Steering Committee. After growing up in Florida and Tennessee and
serving in the Army in World War II, he attended Vanderbilt University and spent 10
years in working for the New Orleans Item and the Times-Picayune. He came to
Russellville, Ky., in 1958 to edit The News-Democrat, which later became part of a
chain of weekly newspapers he organized and headed until selling the company in
1985. He was federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1980-82,
under Presidents Carter and Reagan. He is best known as host and producer of
“Comment on Kentucky,” now in its 33rd year as the longest-running public-affairs
show on Kentucky Educational Television and known for its candor, humor and
informed background on current events. He has been active in several statewide civic and educational
groups, heading the Kentucky Press Association, the Governor’s Council on Educational Reform, the
Shakertown Roundtable, Leadership Kentucky, the Kentucky Oral History Commission and the
Kentucky Arts Commission, which awards fellowships named for him. He is a charter member of the
Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, recipient of six honorary degrees and many awards for public service.
Jenay Tate is editor and publisher of The Coalfield Progress in Norton, Va., and its
sister newspapers, The Post, of Big Stone Gap, and the Dickenson Star, of Clintwood.
Since her 1979 graduation from the University of Kentucky, she has spent her entire
professional career at the Progress, owned by her family until late 2005, when she and
her brother sold the business to American Hometown Publishing. She was a reporter,
managing editor and editor before following in her parents’ footsteps as publisher. She
has won many individual news and editorial writing honors and page-design awards in
Virginia Press Association competitions, and led a team that established The Coalfield
Progress as one of the best community newspapers in the southeastern United States.
She has been recognized for a variety of other professional and civic accomplishments. She says of
herself, “Once a comfortable veteran in news, now a novice learning business side.”
Chris Waddle directs the Knight Community Journalism Fellows, the University
of Alabama master’s degree program in the newsroom of The Anniston Star. He is
also president of the Ayers Family Institute for Community Journalism and senior
lecturer in community journalism at the university. Previously he held roles at the
Star as vice president/news, executive editor, editorial page editor and managing
editor. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2004-05 and Fulbright
Professor of Journalism at American University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, in 2001.
His liberal arts degree is from Birmingham-Southern College and his master’s
degree is from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He was
James A. Clendinen Professor of Editorial and Critical Writing at the University of South Florida
in 2003. Before joining the Star in 1982, he was managing editor of The Kansas City Times while
it was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes. Earlier assignments were at The Commercial Appeal of
Memphis, The Birmingham Post-Herald and The Courier-Journal of Louisville, for which he was
a Washington correspondent, features editor and city editor.
John M. Wylie II is editor and publisher of the weekly Oologah Lake Leader
in Will Rogers’ hometown of Oologah, Okla. His investigative reporting at the
Kansas City Star helped ban a pesticide and helped the paper win a Pulitzer
Prize. In 1984, he and his wife Faith purchased the Leader, which has been
named the state’s best weekly 11 times. He continued his award-winning
investigative reporting; he blocked development of a phony Biblical theme
park, and his reports on U.S. Rep. Steve Largent contributed to the former NFL
star’s upset loss in the 2002 race for governor. Wylie’s political commentary
has a national following through the newspaper’s Web site and his Internet
column, The Political Scene. He was at the forefront of coverage of the collapse of electric
deregulation and the power marketing industry while writing from 1978 until 2004 for a dozen
publications produced by the Platts division of The McGraw Hill Cos. His coverage of Westar
Energy and its efforts to buy its way out of regulation through political contributions drew
national attention.
Laurie Ezzell Brown is editor of The Canadian (Tex.) Record. She and her mother, Nancy
Ezzell, are at the Summit to receive the Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and
integrity in rural journalism. For details, see next page.
Texas family wins award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism
The Ezzell family of the Canadian Record, a weekly newspaper in
Canadian, Tex., are the 2007 winners of the Tom and Pat Gish Award for
courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism. At left are Record Editor
Laurie Ezzell Brown and her mother, Nancy Ezzell. Nancy still works at
The Record every day. Her column, Petticoat Patter, is a Record staple.
The award from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
honors the couple who this winter celebrated their 50th anniversary of
publishing The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky. The Gishes, in photo
below, were the first recipients of the award. Their son, Eagle Editor Ben
Gish, was among the judges who unanimously voted to give the award to
the Ezzell family. “The Ezzells clearly demonstrate the tenacity, courage
and integrity I’ve been privileged to witness in growing up around and
working with my parents,” Gish said.
Retired publisher Al Smith, a founder of the Institute and chairman of
its steering committee, said: “The story of this gutsy Texas family is as
comparable to the Gishes of Kentucky as anyone could imagine.”
The Canadian Record has held local, state and national politicians
accountable, fought political extremism, opposed unwise military
adventures and helped protect the environment, sometimes against
organized and violent opposition. All are “great examples of courage,
tenacity and integrity,” Smith said.
Ben and Nancy Ezzell moved to Canadian, named for a river, in 1949 when Ben became editor of the Record.
Seven years later, they bought the paper. Hearing about a new, secret organization meeting in Amarillo in
1961, he drove 100 miles to attend and wrote one of the first stories in the nation about the John Birch
Society. The story was reprinted around the country. Ben was a conservative who supported Eisenhower and
Nixon, but the Vietnam War changed him, and he and his paper vigorously opposed it – not a theoretical
exercise for a journalist in a small Texas Panhandle town in 1970. One of his largest advertisers published an
open letter and organized an ad boycott. Ben offered to run his letter for free. After another antiwar editorial
in 1971, someone fired 19 shots from a pellet gun through the newspaper’s door and plate-glass window. Ben
said, “Someone was expressing an editorial opinion. It is a great American privilege.” Another “opinion” was
tossed into the Ezzells’ yard and exploded under Laurie’s bedroom window. Ben died in 1993 at the age of
76. He wrote his last editorial in his deathbed at a hospital in Oklahoma City. After his death, Texas Lt. Gov.
Bob Bullock, no friend of journalists, said, “Ben Ezzell was more than just a legend in Texas journalism; I
think he was the conscience of the journalistic profession, of the readership and of the politicians.”
Whatever gene it is that makes for outstanding weekly newspaper editors has been passed on to Laurie Ezzell
Brown. She got the man who wanted to be Panhandle district attorney to admit that he was a drug addict. He
lost, but sued for libel, costing the Record thousands in legal fees. In 1995, Laurie began writing about largescale hog farming when several operations headed for the Panhandle. Her reporting and editorials prompted
county commissioners to deny tax incentives for such operations. Her reporting also raised the awareness of
water rights and groundwater protection. In 2004, Laurie uncovered a plan to fell more than 1,000 trees along
a Panhandle highway. Her research revealed that trees were less hazardous than objects placed along the
highway by the state. Eventually the highway department revised its plan, targeting only 97 trees for removal.
One of Laurie’s brothers is the local hospital administrator, and they have fought publicly over how to
interpret the state open-meetings law. Journalism in a town of 2,000 people is personal, in a way that urban
reporters and editors find difficult to imagine. “There is no job like this,” Laurie says, “You can make a
difference. You can see the changes. You can really stop bad things from happening, which we’ve done a few
times. A good newspaper is essential for a small town. And it’s never dull.”