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
9:45Issues 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
11:30Lunch, 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.
2:15An 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
2:45Break
3:00Independent 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
4:15Adjourn
5:30BUSES LEAVE for Lexington
(automobile traffic follows US 68 from Shaker Village to Lexington)
6:00Reception, Crowne Plaza Lexington - The Campbell House, 1375 Harrodsburg Rd.
7:00Tom 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
9:30Board buses for return to Shaker Village
Saturday, April 21
West Family Wash House
8 a.m.Continental breakfast
9:00Academic 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
9:45How rural newspapers can adopt the digital culture and drive reader interaction
Discussion led by Ray Laakaniemi, Tiffin University professor and former weekly editor
10:30Group 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 rural- development 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 web-based 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 co-director 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 Eagle-Tribune 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 Judiciary-Media 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 Chronicle-Progress 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 co-chaired 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.